I. INTRODUCTION TO WORLD LITERATURE: HOMER There are three major sources of world literature: the folkloric oral tradition, the Torah and the Bible and the Greek and Roman writers, especially Homer, whose most important works are the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is an epic poem set in the Trojan War, in which the Greek states, in coalition, sieged the city of Troy (Ilium). Though we know, thanks to the German archaeologist Schliemann, that Troy actually existed, the real existence of Homer is seriously doubted, for “Homer” may rather be a school of poets signing with the same name instead of a single author. The differences in the writing of the Iliad show that, composed by a single author or not, it was performed by several poets in different parts of Greece before being written. This leads to another possibility, that of Homer being illiterate. There are many writing techniques in the Iliad, such as the noun-­‐epithets (which helped the poet to remember the poem and create the sensation that everything is repeated and, therefore, ordered), the periphrasis (sometimes containing metaphors, they create the sensation that nature is alive and, therefore, man must not take it for granted) and the digressions (the action stops and the characters introduce a reflection or monologue), among others. Homer’s Iliad is supposed to be the story of a single hero, Achilles, but there are many other important characters: Patroclus, Paris, Hector, etc. All these heroes are willing to conquer history by proving their “areté”, showing that they can bear suffering and fate and staying loyal. Thus, the portrayal of the characters is not only described, but also inferred by their actions. Another interesting point is that it is not at all obvious who is right and wrong, but the readers can not help but sympathising with them because knowing their feelings and motivations avoids the readers seeing them as mere war machines. The Odyssey describes the journey, full of obstacles and dangers, of Ulysses on his way back home from Troy, to Ithaca, where his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, were waiting for him. Ulysses, though a hero too, is very different from Achilles, for he is a clever man, who does not use his strength, but a bunch of canny tricks, to get rid of his enemies (the Cyclops, the mermaids…). The readers of both the Iliad and the Odyssey already know what is about to come, so there is no suspense, which is the desire of knowing what it is going to happen, but expectation, the eagerness of knowing how is that going to happen. II. SOPHOCLES AND OEDIPUS TYRANNUS In Ancient Greece, theatres, which proved the master of the Greek in architecture and acoustic, were built in order to honour the Gods. Thus, an altar war often placed next to the “orchestra”, where, it is believed, sacrifices were made to the Gods. Shows took place during the course of festivals, in very particular dates. As the theatre was very important for the citizens, the whole city focused in one single idea: the theatre festival, which created s strong feeling of unity and membership. Once the work that was going to be represented was selected, after a short competition, the “choregus” (meaning ‘he who finds the chorus’) had to make sure everything was right: selecting the performers, providing them with mask, costumes and a proper place to rehearse, etc. The reason why the “choregus” would do all those things and ran with the expenses is because it was a means of getting social prestige and of showing he was wealthy and pious and he respected the public institutions and, therefore, the democracy. Theatre actors, most of them male, also enjoyed some privileges: they were excused for the military service, for example. Since they wore masks during the representations, they had no facial expression, so they had to master their gestures and voices. Apart from the actors, it was very characteristic the use of a “chorus”, a group of males that would command the main characters, most of the times interrupting the action. If, according to Aristotle, there are three literature genres (epic, lyric and drama), the Ancient Greek drama can also be split in two: comedies (works with humble and vulgar characters in daily situations or with small ambitions, whose purpose was just making the people laugh) and tragedies. A tragedy can be defined as a “mimesis” (‘imitation’) of “praxis” (‘behaviour’). They speak about mighty, high, noble characters droved by their passions, punished by the gods (“nemesis”) and bearing suffering and fate. The audience got into the skin of these characters and suffer with them until the outcome carries the liberation of those heavy feelings, the “catharsis”, the main purpose of tragedies. Many of the Greek tragedians based their works in characters and situations of Homer’s lost, legendary world of heroes, recreating it (e.x: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Euripides’ Helen…). With Aeschylus and Euripides, Sophocles is one of the main Ancient Greek tragedians. Contemporary of the Classic Greece (5th century BC), he reflects in his works his humanistic point of view. One of his greatest tragedies is Oedipus Tyrannus, the story how of Oedipus, ruler of Thebes, finds out that he had killed his father, Laius, and married his mother, Jocasta, without knowing they were his parents, carrying out a terrible prophecy that his parents tried to avoid. Having found out the truth, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself and asks for being exiled, the necessary punishments for having betrayed the ethic standards (“nemesis”). III. DANTE AND THE DIVINE COMEDY Dante’s Divine Comedy would somehow summarise the way of living, politics, theology, etc. of the Middle Ages, which are often considered the “dark ages” of history. Starting with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, the Middle Ages are characterised by the fragmentation of the power in several small nations with a tribal society with three social strata and by the importance given to Christianity, which even lead to consider the Roman Popes as the ones in charge of preserving the unity that existed within the Roman Empire. Dante, whose life was collected in the biographies written by G. Boccaccio and L. Bruni, was born in 1225 in Florence. At school, he was taught Latin, Medieval Literature and Provençal Poetry, which was the beginning of courtly love, a spiritual conception of love in which the poet considers himself a vassal of his beloved Lady, almost portrayed as an angel, who is always unachievable. Following the path of courtly love and influenced by some important poets of that time (G. Guinizzeli, G. Cavalcanti, G. d’Arezzo…), Dane wrote Il Fiore (a collection of sonnets based on Le roman de la rose, by Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris), Il Deto (a summary of courtly love) and his first important book: Vita Nuova, a collection of poems (songs and ballads) describing his platonic relationship with his beloved Beatrice. In 1292, Dante read Cicero (De oratore) and Boethius (De consolation philosophiae and De Trinitate) and attended several religious schools, getting familiar with theology and with the ideas of St. Thomas of Aquino. He became particularly interested in Franciscans’ philosophy. In 1302, while he was in Rome in a diplomatic mission, Dante was sentenced to death. However, he was eventually condemned to exile and never returned to Florence, which gave him the opportunity of writing from a distant point, with more freedom. He wrote the Divine Comedy in this context. Dante’s main works are De volgari eloquentia (vindication of the importance of local languages, claiming they were good enough for literature and philosophy), Monarchia (a politic book that aimed to the restoration of the Roman Empire) and the Divine Comedy. The Divine Comedy is a Christian epic poem, written in “terza rima” and divided in cantos, that speaks about a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. In this poem, everything is portrayed through the experience of the very Dante, an “intruder among the death”, that exhaustively describes everything he feels. He is guided by Virgil, who is appropriate to the task because he was the author of one of the greatest epics, the Aeneid, and, therefore, he would improve the poetic level of Dante. What Dante does in this poem is to materialise the abstract concepts with which Hell is described in the Bible, translating them into concrete images, situations, characters, etc. However, his aim is not to change the orthodox meaning of these elements, but to simply refresh them, make them new. For this task he is helped by the classical mythology (influenced by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Horace’s Odes…), mixing the Jewish and Christian tradition with the pagan Greek and Roman one. He also includes some medieval elements, such as the character Lancelot. The Divine Comedy would be the story of how humans can reach God. The fact that it starts in Hell but the character is able to move to other places means that humans are not condemned, but they are able to choose where to end. In this work, Dante cleverly places Beatrice at the end of Purgatory, making her the way of approaching to God: loving her means loving God. Thus, Dante successfully makes compatible Christianity with the pagan tradition of courtly love. IV. GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO AND THE DECAMERON Giovanni Boccacio was born in Certaldo in 1313. His father was a trading man, which happens to be important for two main reasons: on the one hand, commerce was one of the most important elements of the Italian society at that time, and, on the other hand, as he was a very wealthy man, he was able to send his son, G. Boccaccio, to Naples. Naples was supposed to be a very amusing, entertaining town. Most of the books Boccaccio wrote there (Caccia di Diana, Filocolus, Filostratus…) were just entertaining literature, much closer to modern literature than the theological, moral, etc. one of precedent authors, such as Dante. In these courtly love funny stories, written in prose, Boccaccio addresses to women. Boccacio’s father called him back to Florence in 1341. At that time, Florence was a poor city, both because of the fights between the two main Florentine families and because of the pestilence plague that affected the city in 1348, which changed completely the path of social and human behaviours, as Boccaccio would describe in the Decameron’s preface. In 1350, Boccaccio met Petrarch, who was the father of Humanism, a movement of rediscovery of the Ancient Greece and Rome that aimed to take a new path to knowledge and erudition, including the study of both Christian and profane ancient authors, such as Cicero, in order to get a deeper approach to spiritual life. Influenced by Petrarch, Boccaccio began writing in Latin, as well as still writing in his vernacular Italian, and took a new literary path: to erudition, knowledge, philology, spirituality, etc., taking Petrarch as a model. Thus, Boccaccio’s final years are a counterpart of his former life, in what somehow is a retraction of his past sins. Boccaccio wrote several biographies, including those of Dante and Petrarch, who are almost portrayed as saints. However, his most famous work is the Decameron. The Decameron is a part of a very popular phenomenon in Boccaccio’s time: the flourishing collections of short stories with a narrative frame that, remaining throughout the whole book, gives context, unity and cohesion to the tales, in a way that still allows the author to include a very interesting variety and diversity of stories. Thus, the Decameron tells the story of 10 young Florentine women and men that, escaping from the pestilence plague that Florence was suffering and the moral collapse tied to it, take refuge in bucolic places away from the city and tell stories to entertain themselves, following certain rules: each day, one of them is chosen as the king or queen and, therefore, has the right to choose the subject of the stories. Most of these stories are about love, but following a very different tradition than the courtly love: that extracted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Arms amandi, a more physical conception of love. In fact, in the Decameron, men are nothing but creatures of flesh and blood, being guided by their passions and eventually struggling. In the preface, the author seems to be too ambiguous and unreliable. Despite that, and the fact that the aim of this book is supposed to be to entertain the people, especially the ladies, readers can find some moral lessons in these stories, though the way in which they are exposed is not the traditional one (“exempla imitanda”: good behaviours that the readers should imitate), but a very modern one (“exempla evitanda”: bad behaviours that they should avoid). In conclusion, while Dante was the end of an area, summarising the Middle Ages, Boccaccio is the beginning of a new one, in which men and society are deprived of any transcendental link. V. PETRARCH Born in 1304 in Arezzo, from a Florentine family, Boccaccio spent most of his youth in Florence. He studied Law in Montpellier and Bologna, the first university, but he would later consider these years as a waste of time because he did not want to study Law, to which he was forced by his father, but to become a writer. Petrarch also lived in Avignon, where he became familiar with the European lyrical tradition: the courtly love. Petrarch eventually took orders, but never became a priest. In this religious context, writing was seen was a way of searching spirituality, meditating, etc. When he was about 30 years old, although not many of his works had been published (e.x: Africa), he claimed that he should be crowned as a laureate poet, which in the past was a recognition made to great poets. He claimed that this recognition should be restores, as a way of recovering the past splendour of Ancient Rome and eventually got crowned. It can thus be guessed that Petrarch was a very clever and ambitious man. Ambition is, in fact, a key word in order to understand his works. Petrarch is sometimes called “the first tourist”, because he was the first man that travelled around Europe just for pleasure. One of the things he always did in those travels was to go to the libraries of the cities he visited, in which Petrarch discovered some unknown manuscripts, finding valuable, hidden writings and knowledge. Thus, for example, he found some letter of Cicero and translated them into modern Italian. After that, Cicero’s style became a new patron or model for humanists. In fact, humanism began with this scholarship, defending the importance of re-­‐
studying the classics. Nevertheless, Petrarch never became a philologist, because he lacked any study of Greek. Today, when we think of Petrarch we tend to see him as a great poet, the author of the Canzioneri and the Triomphi. However, Petrarch was not just a poet; in fact, most of his books are prose works, written in Latin. One of them is the Secretum, a story of a dream. While Petrarch was sleeping, he dreamt that St. Agustin suddenly came before him and they held an argument in which St. Agustin blamed Petrarch on having sinned because of his literary ambition, which, according to St. Agustin, may give the poet acknowledgement, power and fame, but not salvation. Apart from this one, other important books are: De otio religioso (speaking about the free time, which should be spent in spiritual issues such as meditation and philosophy), De vita solitaria (retirement, isolation a life enjoying nature and reflection would be the perfect way of getting to known yourself), De viris ilustribus (about several important historical characters, like Cicero, most of them from the Ancient Rome) and the two collections of his letters: Familiares and Seniles. Petrarch’s poetry is supposed to be inspired by a single woman, Laura. However, although she is described in many of Petrarch’s poems, readers do not get but a very vague idea of her, which leads to two possible interpretations. On the one hand, considering that “Laura” is the female form of “Lauro” (meaning ‘laurel’), Petrarch could be using this name as a metaphor of knowledge, fame, etc., the real object of the poet’s love, his whole life being just an attempt to reach it. The other possible interpretation is that Laura is just an excuse for Petrarch to write about love. In fact, the attitude that Petrarch holds is not loving someone, which requires a certain approach to the other person that he does not make, but of being in love, a self-­‐attitude that leads him to self-­‐reflection and self-­‐knowledge. Then, the poet is constantly feeding his love, conscious that it is the source of his poetry, in a sort of creative narcissism. Anyways, Petrarch eventually claims that, after 31 years of loving, he is weary and rejects having fallen in love, for it is useless and a waste of time and energy. Instead, solitude is seen as the good path, source of peace, knowledge and preparation for the death. VI. HUMANISM The literary and cultural phenomenon of Humanism began as an attempt to develop and educational program and became the driving force of the Renaissance. Humanism was mainly based in the study of the Latin and Greek texts. Declaring themselves inheritors of these two civilisations, humanists translated and studied the works from these periods, trying to recover the lost splendour of the Ancient World. Thus, they recovered ideas that certainly influenced their way of thinking. For example, thanks to the Greek influence, humanists started to feel a very anguish concern about the real nature of man, developing an anthropocentrical philosophy in which man was seen as the centre of the universe. As quotation was the most proper way of gaining authority, humanists quoted the ancient, wise authors, somehow partaking their authority and erudition. One of the results of the rediscovery of the classical authors is the reject of the philosophy of Aristotle, who used to be the most important thinker since the scholastics had made his theories and those from the Spanish thinker Averroes the base of Christian thinking. Humanists discarded Aristotle for being too materialist and empiric and, in their quest for purity and wisdom, they restudied Plato, whose philosophy was more direct, poetic and spiritual. One of the most important centres of this revival of the platonic thinking was Florence, where there was a happy correspondence between that spiritual love of the “Dolce Stil Nuovo” and Plato’s idealistic philosophy. Some of the main humanists were Pietro Pomponazzi, Marsilio Ficino, Picco della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla, Luis Vives and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Born in Netherlands in 1466, Erasmus of Rotterdam was an orphan, raised by Augustinian monks. He eventually left the monastery to become the secretary of a French archbishop. Thus, he was very acquainted with the Christian way of living, towards which he developed a very critical attitude. However, Erasmus’ revolt against the Church was not like Luther’s one, based on questioning the Christian tolds, but just a reject of the bad habits, attitude and living of the Church. Erasmus’ main works are Education of the Christian Prince, Handbook of the Christian Knight, Ciceronianas, On the Civility of Children, The Praise of Folly and Explanation of the Apostle’s Creed. In the Education of the Christian Prince, Erasmus discards Maquiaveli’s Prince, a treaty that was the inspiration for most of the rulers of that time, in which man is believed to be absolutely bad, dishonest, unreliable and corrupt. This means that whoever rules the country must not trust anyone else and has to make the rest of the people fear him (“It is better to be feared than loved”). On the contrary, Erasmus argued that rulers have to respect their subjects, for they had to be servants or the people, a very democratic point of view. Handbook of the Christian Knight still refers to that old tradition of the courtly love, but, in contrast with all the specific tips of Le Roman de la Rose, Erasmus believed that caring too much about all those external details would make the knight miss his real point, for courtly love is rather a spiritual matter that would help him to improve himself. Christian knights should therefore read the Bible and extract from it everything necessary to the improvement of their soul. Ciceronianas is a reject of Cicero’s style, considering that it is not suitable anymore for the Christian writers. In a certain way, it is a reply to Petrarch and the humanists. In the Praise of Folly, Erasmus claims that a touch of folly is necessary in human being, for reason alone brings conflict and we all find relief in realising ourselves from the strictly rational behaviours from time to time. In this essay, Folly speaks and develops a dialogue that everybody is eager to hear. Folly criticises he government, marriage, Church, monastic life, etc. On the other hand, she appreciates friendship, knowledge and jokes and humour. While most humanists believed reason to be the key of nature, existence, dignity and everything, Erasmus though there were many other faculties (wit, imagination, irrational fancy…) that should not be forgotten, as he claims in On the Civility of Children. VII. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND MACBETH William Shakespeare was born in Stradtford on Avon in 1564. At school, students sometimes played Terence’s and Plauto’s dramas, which would provide Shakespeare with a certain influence of the classic theatre. His father, the city major, was sympathetic to the travelling theatre companies, a very unusual fact because actors were viewed as tramps and associated with beggars, drunkards, prostitutes, etc. They were supposed to be lacking of morality and, therefore, they were rejected. The most common plays those days were the morality plays, short pieces, inherited from the medieval tradition, that talked about the consequences of being guided by vices. They were linked to the Church, not only because of their strong Christian character, but also because they were played inside the church or very close to its gate. Most of the times, they were allegories: the characters were abstractions of ideas and vices (e.x: Greed), doomed from the very beginning. While Shakespeare’s father was a Protestant, Shakespeare is supposed to be a Catholic. However, as he had to write both for and Anglican and a Catholic audience, he tried to avoid compromising himself. In his works, therefore, there is not much concern about theological issues (eternity, salvation…), but the characters are worried for world issues (power, ambition…) When Shakespeare moved to London, this was an unsafe, overcrowded, polluted, rat infested city, in which diseases easily spread. Despite that, this was the time and place where the first theatres since the time of the Romans were built: the Swan, the Theatre, the Rose, the Globe… Theatres were seen as places of low morality, so many puritans wanted to close them. In addition, the unhealthy conditions of these buildings made them a proper place for diseases to spread. This provided the local authorities with a good excuse for closing them for long periods of time. In the performances, a lot of imagination was required, for two main reasons: as the theatres had no roof, the natural conditions sometimes made the representation a little bit unnatural (e.x: too much light for a day scene) and there were not many means to create a good “atrezzo”, so companies had to make do with what they had and use the dialogues and aside comments to set the scene or describe actions that were impossible to develop on stage. Shakespeare had three different ways of spelling his name, which suggest that there was not a complete awareness of the sense of author. However, there was a constant competition of writers (e.x: Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spencer…) that forced them to always keep on changing their repertoire and to imitate the successful characters and stories of other authors, reinterpreting them. In 1559, Shakespeare built the Globe. Julius Caesar was the first play performed in this theatre. Although it was a tragedy that has a subject with which not all the audience would be familiar with, it was a success. It was followed by Hamlet. Another very important tragedy of Shakespeare is Macbeth, in which a prophecy of three witches and ambition lead Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to kill the king and usurp his throne. Eventually, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are killed by their own sense of guilt. The action is set in Scotland, at that time seen as a barbarian, cold, mysterious place, which makes it appropriate for this play, in which supernatural elements (e.x: the three witches) and suspense-­‐creating riddles (e.x: the forest that moves) become very important. Among the most particular characteristics of Shakespeare’s plays, there are two that should be underlined in order to understand his success: his mix of “kings and clowns” (he wrote not only about mighty, high characters, but also about tramps, drunkards…) and his freedom when choosing the outcome of the stories, which is not always predictable sticking to moral standards. VIII. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES AND THE GLASS MAN Spanning from the publication of both La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas) and Nevrija’s Grammatica in 1492 to the death of Calderón de la Barca in 1681, the 16th and 17th centuries are considered the Spanish Golden Age of literature. Some of the main authors of that time were Garcilaso de la Vega, Juan Boscán, Juan Herrera and St. John of the Cross. There two main literary genres: picaresque and mysticism. It was also the time of the Counter-­‐Reformation, a movement of purge of the Church from heresy. Spain became the centre of this movement, which strongly influenced the way of living and culture of that time. Miguel de Cervantes was probably born in Alcalá de Henares in 1547 and, again probably, attended a Jesuit school. In 1570, he was in service of the cardinal Gillio Acquaviva and he followed him through the main Italian cities (Palermo, Florence, Venice…). This travel to Italy, in a very different situation from Spain that made Cervantes felt freer there, would influence him a lot. When he left the cardinal Acquaviva, he enlisted as a soldier. In 1571, in the Battle of Lepanto, he was injured in his left hand. In 1575, still in military service, he and his brother were captured by pirates and spent 5 years in a prison in Algiers, being eventually released by the Trinitarians. Cervantes started as a poet and he invented a new stanza, the “ovillejo”, but he was not very successful. He became then a theatre writer, author of several “pasos” and “entremeses”. The trouble was that he was contemporary of the most successful Lope de Vega, of whom Cervantes was very jealous because he would never be able to become as important and famous as Lope was. La Galatea was the first novel of Cervantes, who had inherited the “novellas”, short narrative stories, from the Italian tradition (e.x: Boccaccio). In 1605, he wrote the first part of Don Quixote. In 1615, he would write its second part, both because he needed money and because many false second parts of this famous book were being published (e.x: Avellaneda’s one). Other important books Cervantes wrote were: The Voyage of Parnassus, a mock work in verse in which Cervantes gives his opinion about the main authors of his time, and The Exemplary Novels, 12 short stories that have a moral lesson or profit for readers. One of these novels is The Glass Man, a story about a well-­‐educated man that, unintentionally empoisoned by a woman, becomes crazy, believing he is made of glass. He then attacks and criticises several professions (e.x: poets). The people trust his critics and he becomes very famous because of his wit and wisdom. However, after he is cured by a clergyman, his former followers reject him. In this novel, glass can be seen as a metaphor of the truth, transparent and very fragile, and the Glass Man like a humanist, critical and detached from everything. After the death of Cervantes in 1616, Persiles and Sigismunda was published. This was the work that Cervantes trusted to be the one which would bring him popularity and prestige, but, eventually, it was the Don Quixote which achieved that. Although Cervantes’ Don Quixote starts with a declaration of its being a parody, it is far more profound than that. Indeed, it is the first serious novel, for until that time authors gave more important to poetry and theatre, believing that the aim of novels was just to entertain the readers. One of the reasons that make the Don Quixote so relevant is that Cervantes introduced in it a very important new element: freedom. Thus, Cervantes combines different genres (inserting pastoral, romance, byzantine, etc. stories in the main plot), prose and poetry and several languages (from knights, picaresque, etc.) and registers. IX. THE 18TH CENTURY The 18th century has received many labels and names: the Age of Wisdom, Rationalism, the Age of Sensibility, the Enlightenment… During that time, France became a very important country and so the French culture spread and was imitated all over Europe and even reached the American continent. The French most important thinkers, philosophers and writers of that time were Montesquieu and Jean-­‐Jacques Rousseau. Montesquieu is one of the fathers of modern democracy, thanks to works like L’esprit des lois, in which he claims that, if justice and freedom should prevail in a democracy, then the three powers have to remain separate and independent from each other. He also wrote Lettres persanes, an epistolary work composed by the letters of two characters: a Persian man living in Paris, whose society he criticises, and a relative of his. This provides the author with a certain distance that allows him to criticise with more freedom. Jean-­‐Jacques Rousseau, who came from Geneva, is especially important for his Émile, ou l’éducation, a bildungsroman that tells the story of how Rousseau tried to educate a boy called Émile. Rousseau claimed that nature should be the educational guide, for the individual is good by himself and it is the society what turns him evil. Thus, education should aim to develop the good natural instincts and capacities of the child, such as the imagination, through which one can develop his moral ideas (sympathy). Another important book of Rousseau is Le contrat social, in which he sets the path to modern democracy, claiming that society is not a natural fact, but the result of an agreement in which the individuals pledge to accept some laws in order to get protection, justice, etc. This idea goes against the theories of classical thinkers, such as Aristotle, who believed man to be a social animal. Le contrat social is also relevant because of the introduction of the idea of popular sovereignty. Rousseau also wrote Les rêveries du promeneur solitarie (a book about his experiences and walks) and Julie, ou la nouvelle Heloïse (an epistolary work about an impossible love relationship), as well as many essays and poems, always considering that literature should be useful and aim to illustrate or instruct the readers, so it must always include political or moral ideas. Apart from them, other important thinkers were Diderot and Holbach. Among the literature writers, those who should be underlined are: Boileau, Perrault, Jean Racine, Molière and Voltaire. X. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE AND THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER Although Romanticism developed as a general dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment culture and some of its main characteristics are a reaction against the Enlightenment ideas, Romanticism is a much more complex movement than just a mere opposition to the Enlightenment. Unlike what was happening in France, German culture and the German language had not reached their complete development. Thus, Romantic authors developed certain nationalism, writing in German and about German topics and characters as a way of fighting the French “literary colonisation”. One of these nationalist authors was Herder, who wrote On German Literature, encouraging German authors to write in German and in a German fashion, rejecting the use of French. This was very surprising for, at that time, there was not such a state called Germany, but a bunch of little territories that shared a cultural basis. Herder’s idea of nation did not correspond with Rousseau’s one, because, for Herder, there is a nation that is not a material reality, but something spiritual: a “volk”, people, whose voice is its art (music, literature…) Some of the main Romantic figures were Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, Klopstock, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Iacobi, Hamann, Herder, Schiller and Goethe. Goethe was born in Frankfort in 1749. He learned Italian and Italy, with its language and culture, became sort of a myth for him. In fact, he always projected to travel to Italy and live there. In the 1770s, he lived in Strasbourg. At that time, in both l’Alsace and la Lorraine French was only spoken in the cities, while German was the main language in the countryside. This stage in Goethe’s life was important because he saw a theatre company performing Faust, which impressed him so much that, years later, he would write his own Faust, one of his masterpieces. He met Herder, the author of On German Literature, who became very influential on him. Goethe then began to do something very Romantic: he collected and transcribed the traditional ballads, poems and songs of the German oral literature. Some time after, he wrote one of his first masterpieces: Götz von Berlichingen, a tragedy about a local ruler of the 16th century, time of many revolts and riots because of religious issues. Back in Frankfort, he began to develop his theory of the poetic genius, to which he referred as the “inner sun”, an exceptional source of the soul. This idea is again very Romantic: the genius is not somebody that learns the job of writing, painting, etc., but someone that spontaneously puts art out of his own spirit, soul. Thus, authors are creators, not imitators, that do not need tradition or other authors. This idea is somehow reflected in his Prometeus, a poem about one of the two main Western myths, the other one being the Faust. When Goethe moved to Weimar, he made friends with Schiller, who wrote mostly plays (such as Wilhelm Tell and The Robbers), trying to develop a German theatre, but was also interested in philosophy and poetry. They both began the “Sturm und Drang” movement. Goethe worked for the Duke of Weimar and wrote, among others, Pièces d’occasion, Theory of Colours and Wilhelm meister, a bildungsroman collecting his experiences as tutor of the Duke’s daughters. Escaping from Weimar, he eventually travelled to Italy, where he discovered very interesting things (e.x: Palladianism, Michelangelo…) This travel influenced him so much that, admitting the importance of the influence of the past in art and the impossibility of writing “ex nihilo”, he wrote some classic-­‐like tragedies, like Iphigenia and Kophta. Goethe’s most important work is The Sorrows of Young Werther, an epistolary work about a very sentimental soul that finally commits suicide. In this book, the three main characters are involved in a complicated love triangle relationship: the unstable, emotional, spontaneous and free Werther feels a most extreme Romantic passion for the virtuous and charming Lotte, who wants to remain faithful to her “bourgeois relationship” with the reasonable, sensible and convenient Albert. Not only the novel itself became very popular, but also some of its symbols, such as the clothes of Werther and Lotte, became fashionable. XI. RUSSIAN NOVEL Since Russia had never been colonised by the Romans, it was a very particular place that lacked of the cultural basis that Europe shared (the classic world, the Renaissance, Protestantism and the Reformation…). Moreover, Russia had a tsarist, absolutist system, in which there was no political or religious freedom. Nationalism tends to be the result of an encounter with a foreign power. Thus, when the Swedish tried to invade Russia (partly successfully), the Russians had to defend themselves, which lead to the arise of a Russian nationalism, mostly because of Peter the Great. Peter the Great was a tsar that tried to unify and create a new Russia, by introducing novelties such as the clothes, the use of Russian instead of French, etc. This somehow fostered the Russian novel, for it became a means of expression in issues concerning the changes of Peter the Great or the political freedom, for example. Russian artists had fewer constraints about their writing because they did not have all that European mythology, love tradition, etc. Russian models, were, therefore, more modern. During the Napoleon invasion, the French became the ambassadors of the European political ideas. The Russians finally defeated the French, but its political influence remained. French cultural influence decreased during the Golder Age of Russian literature. Although knowledge of French culture was still important, it was not the dominant basis anymore. Alexandre Pushkin is considered the great Russian classic. However, he was too talented and Romantic to be a realistic writer. As well as Boris Gudonov and The Captain’s Daughter, one of his major works is Eugene Oneguin, a verse novel that exasperated the neoclassical writers for in Neoclassicism everything is regular and constant, whereas Pushkin is always changing the rime, metric, etc. of the verses. Eugene Oneguin became the archetype of a character that would be very important in Russian novel: the unnecessary man, he who nobody would notice or miss, lacking of any particular characteristic that could make him stand out. It appears in many other novels, such as Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illich. Another important idea introduced by Pushkin is that fiction could serve as a critic of society. Nikolai Gogol is considered the father of Russian novel. He is the author of works such as Taras Bulba, a story about the Cossacks, brave soldiers fighting in the context of Romantic nationalism. He was a very spiritual writer, who always provided his works with a transcendental character, as it can be appreciated in Dead Souls. This novel is a beautiful story in which the borderline between the world of the death and that of the living is trespassed and there is communication between both. Gogol also wrote very funny short stories, with a sense of humour and the grotesque that remains of Cervantes. Some of them are Diary of the Mad Man (a diary during which the language used changes as the narrator goes crazy. Thus, in the beginning, it is easy to understand what he is saying but, in the end, it is very confusing because of the “disintegrated” language) and The Nose (a somehow surrealistic story in which Gogol breaks the possible laws of any narrative making a nose the main character of the story). The old coat is a short story about the unnecessary man: a man who works as a civil servant and sleeps next to his work desk because he has not a home, covered with a very old coat. Eventually, the coat breaks and the man dies, frozen. It is a tragedy without greatness, a story of us, modern man, with no more heroes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was, as a young man, member of a revolutionary group. He was found out by the police, arrested and accused of high treason and conspiracy. He got a death penalty that in the last minutes commuted to a large prison in a Russian town called Kazan. While he was there, the only book the prisoners were allowed to read was the Bible. His reading of the Bible promoted a strong, radical shift in his ideas: from being a revolutionist, he turned to respect tradition and conservative policies. He recollected his memories about his stage as prisoner in a work called Memories of the House of the Death. Other important works of Dostoyevsky are Humiliated and Offended, The Idiot and The Karamazov Brothers. Humiliated and Offended is a story about a poor girl that, although unmarried, is pregnant, which brings humiliation to her and her whole family. Despite that, these humiliated, poor, miserable people stick together and manage to make it through. The Idiot narrates the story of Prince Myshkin, a young noble man who, since he had been educated alone, far from the crowd, did not have experience in real life. When he moves to the city, he meets a mature, non-­‐naïve woman used to seduce wealthy men. She falls in love with him and they began a relationship that would end in disaster for the naïf and pure prince Myshkin. Prince Myshkin is somehow parallel with Segismundo (from Calderón’s Life Is a Dream), Cervantes’ Don Quixote (because of their naïveté), Plato’s idea that living means falling into this earthly world from some higher kind of reality and Rousseau’s Émile (for Myshkin was innocent and it was the society who corrupted it). The Brothers Karamazov is a story about a father and his four sons. The father is a waster and spends most of his money drinking and laying with prostitutes. One day, one of his sons, Ivan, asks him for some money in order to pay his debts, but he refuses. The very next day, the father is murdered, a crime of which Ivan in accused, and that sets in motion the action of the story. In all Dostoyevsky’s stories, characters are extreme and seemed to be doomed to destroy each other. There is also a very contradictory view of Russia: on the one hand, it is a very poor nation, but with a sense of superiority, due to the spirituality of the country.