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Letteratura Inglese II 1 a 2014-5 Letteratura Inglese II 1 A 2015 –2016 Inizio corso 1 ottobre 2015. Otello di William Shakespeare. Matrici, modelli e stili della letteratura e della cultura moderna e contemporanea in una tragedia inglese del Seicento. Lezioni 1-6 Le reazioni a Otello (1603) nella storia : scandali e eccessi. Immedesimazione e rifiuto: una tragedia razzista e misogina, kitsch . Oscenità: reazioni alla conclusione senza speranze. Citazioni da 5.2. “Let it be hid. The object poisons sight”. Sul perché Otello non è una tragedia razzista e misogina. Otello e la messinscena dell’immaginario razzista e misogino. A partire dalla trama: Non solo la tragedia della gelosia. Luoghi e tempi della tragedia: Il significato di Venezia e Cipro per gli Inglesi dell’epoca. Altri plays veneziani di Shakespeare. La tragedia precipita verso le sue conclusioni. Fonti: Gli Ecatommiti di Giraldi Cinzio; sulla eredità dei classici per il Rinascimento Inglese. Modelli e stili italiani per la formazione di una nazione inglese che si appresta a entrare nella modernità: Early Modern England (1500-1600). L’Inghilterra tra Medioevo e Modernità: rivoluzioni scientifiche e loro conseguenze (Copernico, Newton e Galileo). Nostalgia del passato e speranze/apprensioni per il futuro. Lo sguardo dell’uomo al centro del mondo. Shakespeare e la sua trasformazione delle fonti per il pubblico inglese. Le scuole al tempo di Shakespeare e l’influsso della cultura classica: l’importanza della retorica e dell’oratoria. Autore : anacronismo della nozione di autore e di testo – Dal copione alla scena al testo: rolls e roles. Il ruolo del teatro: mercanti e mercato teatrale. Nuove classi sociali. La tradizione teatrale in Inghilterra. Il teatro come liturgia: evento popolare, religioso e politico. Il potere politico e sociale del teatro: luogo di sperimentazione di nuovi modelli identitari. Identità e alterità. Essere Inglesi. La Riforma Protestante e l’identità nazionale. La Riforma Protestante: Motivi dello scisma di Enrico VIII (1533)- Da Lutero (Wittenberg) all’Inghilterra Tudor. Lutero, Calvino e altri .I paradossi della predestinazione. Elezione e dannazione. Libero arbitrio e coscienza individuale. La rilettura, traduzione e interpretazione della Bibbia. La centralità della Bibbia nella formazione del nuovo Cristiano. Quali sono le “buone opere”? L’inizio di Otello in medias res: di chi e di cosa si sta parlando? Segreti. I nomi dei personaggi non vengono menzionati per molto tempo. Invidie, risentimenti, gelosie e vendicatività di Iago che convince Roderigo a fidarsi di lui; Le trame di Iago e le sue confidenze al pubblico (1.3. 397-398). Iago e il suo ruolo di servo: Alfiere (Ensign e Ancient) del Moro (il Generale), colui che porta il suo stendardo, Iago serve e rappresenta il Moro. Iago e la mancata nomina a luogotenente 1 dell’esercito attribuita a Cassio – uno scribacchino senza pratica. Il potere delle raccomandazioni “ Why, there’s no remedy. ’Tis the curse of service. / Preferment goes by letter and affection, / And not by old gradation, where each second / Stood heir to th’ first” (1.1. 35-38)” e la forza della “elezione”: “But he, sir, had th’election” (1.1. 26). Maledizioni. Iago come Mefistofele. Il patto con il diavolo per conoscere: da Satana, servo ribelle a Dio nella Bibbia al Doctor Faustus di Christopher Marlowe al Faust di Goethe al mito di Faust. Le ambiguità del rapporto tra servo e padrone nella storia e nella filosofia. (Friedrich Hegel) Iago come servo scettico e opportunista: Sullo scetticismo e sui motivi della sua rinascita nell’Inghilterra Early Modern. Dal filosofo greco dell’antichità Pirrone a Cartesio e Montaigne (poi a John Locke e David Hume). La filosofia del dubbio serve a nuove forme di conoscenza. Da Amleto (1601), la tragedia del dubbio (“To be or not to be, that is the question”….) a Otello (1603), la tragedia sulle conseguenze catastrofiche del dubbio. Iago, erede cinico di Amleto, mette il dubbio al servizio dell’opportunismo: “It is as sure as you are Roderigo, / Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago: / In following him, I follow but myself”. (1.1.57-60); “I am not what I am” (1.1. 66). (Exodus: And God said unto Moses: I AM THAT I AM). Iago e l’insinuazione del dubbio sulla trasparenza del senso delle parole: diffidenza, sospetti e processi. Ma i metodi delle nuove scienze empiriche vengono usati per cercare, invece delle prove, le controprove della colpa già addebitata, come nei processi per stregoneria dell’epoca. Iago come artefice delle trame, improvvisatore, deus ex machina, alter ego di Shakespeare, “autore implicito”. Iago convince Roderigo a svegliare il senatore Brabanzio, nel cuore della notte, con la notizia che la figlia Desdemona è fuggita con il Moro di Venezia. Le ire di Brabanzio – dice Iago – saranno la disgrazia del Moro e Roderigo avrà campo libero per amare Desdemona. E’ la prima mossa della rapida partita di Iago giocata per destituire Cassio, soppiantarlo nel ruolo che egli ritiene gli sia stato sottratto indebitamente e asservire il Moro alla sua volontà. Iago sfrutterà la openness – la credula fiducia di tutti i Veneziani – a partire da Otello e Desdemona, per ottenere i suoi scopi: convincerà Roderigo a fare in modo che Cassio si ubriachi e aizzi una rissa tra i soldati a Cipro. Otello destituirà Cassio che si rivolgerà alla buona Desdemona perché interceda presso il marito. Da qui sarà facile alimentare i sospetti e la gelosia di Otello riducendolo in suo potere. I flash di Iago nella notte di Venezia : “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram /Is topping your white ewe” (1.1.90); “ I am one, Sir, that comes to tell you your daughter / And the Moor are now making the beast with two backs”. (1.1. 117-20). Le parole di un sogno /incubo in una scena dell’immaginario: l’eros degradato e bestiale tra un nero e una bianca: miscegenation, adulterio e adulterazione, impropria unione di “razze” diverse. 2 Lezioni 7- 12 Venezia ha bisogno di Otello. L’esercito Turco minaccia Cipro, anche se cerca di ingannare gli sguardi della Serenissima fingendo di puntare verso Rodi. Occorre sventare subito il rischio di un’invasione ricorrendo alle impareggiabili virtù militari del Generale Otello (1.2). Me le esigenze pubbliche si scontrano con l’ira di Brabanzio che si rivolge al Senato per denunciare le colpe del Generale. Chiamato a discolparsi dalle accuse di magia nera / stregoneria, Otello rivendica la liceità (la magia bianca) del suo amore con una lunga perorazione. E chiede che Desdemona venga convocata e ascoltata. Desdemona, pur non rinnegando il suo amore filiale, conferma con forza la sua scelta matrimoniale. Il senato conferisce quindi a Otello la guida delle operazioni militari a Cipro. Desdemona chiede di seguire il marito, contro le convenzioni, anche a Cipro dove si combatterà. Chi è il Moro? Colore, etnia e razza nell’Inghilterra early modern. Arabi, Berberi e Mauritani nell’Inghilterra Early Modern: nobili e schiavi, ambasciatori e viaggiatori di colore. Fantasie e pregiudizi sull’Oriente subsahariano. La nascita dello sguardo occidentale sull’ Oriente ( Orientalismo di Edward Said): fantasy e meraviglioso. Le fonti degli stereotipi: narrazioni dei viaggiatori (Sir Walter Raleigh, Travels to Guiana);La Storia dell’Africa di Leone l’Africano, (schiavo berbero liberato dai Cristiani), The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. George Best, A True Discourse of the Late Voyages for the Finding of a Passage in Cathaya e la giustificazione biblica del razzismo: la maledizione di Cam. Otello e la razza dal Colonialismo in poi. Gli sviluppi del razzismo e del colore del Moro a teatro nei secoli : tra Inghilterra e America antiabolizionista. Il Romanticismo e la passione per l’Oriente. Le tenebre di Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness. Il Moro di Shakespeare: nobile o barbaro selvaggio, schiavo / servo o padrone ? Le trasformazioni del Moro nello sviluppo della trama. Le maledizioni del servizio e della razza. • “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram /Is topping your white ewe” (1.1.90); “ I am one, Sir, that comes to tell you your daughter / And the Moor are now making the beast with two backs”. (1.1. 117-20). What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe / If he can carry’t thus! •(Roderigo, 1.1. 66-67) • Transported with no worse nor better guard / But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier, / To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor. •(Roderigo, 1.1.125-126) •Your daughter […] I say again hath made a gross revolt, Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes / In an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and everywhere. •(Roderigo, 1.1.137-140) Oh thou foul thief! Where hast thou stowed my daughter? / Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her: / For I’ll refer me to all things of sense, / If she in chains of magic were not bound,/ Whether a maid, so tender, fair and happy,/ So opposite to 3 marriage, that she shunned /The wealthy curled darlings of our nation,/ Would ever have –t’incur the general mock –/ Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou: to fear not to delight . (Brabantio 1.2. 62-80) •The Moor is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so . •(Iago, 1.3. 394-395) •The Moor - howbeit that I endure him not -/ Is of a constant, loving, noble nature / And, I dare think, He’ll prove to Desdemona / A most dear husband. •(Iago, 2.1.278-280) •Haply for I am black / And have not those soft parts of conversation /that chamberers have : or for I am declined / into the vale of years – yet that’s not much – / she’s gone: I am abused , and my relief / must be to loathe her.
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