Key Learning Questions

Transcription

1 Key Learning Questions What was the world like when Williams was writing? Were the social issues any different to those that dominate my world? Who cares?

2 Key Vocabulary Aristocracy: A political system whereby an elite few rule. Their status is secured through the ownership of property and they are chosen due to their education and heritage. Bourgeoisie: A high social class who own capital or the means of production and are usually concerned with the protection of money and the accruement of property in order to protect social status. Proletariat: A citizen of the lowest, or working class. Often characterised by owning little or no property Industrialisation: urban areas. A period of social and economic change where groups move from agrarian to industrialised ways of living. Usually means a movement to Capitalism: opportunity. Generally speaking, a system where private ownership of the means of production is encouraged, promoting individual wealth and Marxism: Karl Marx believed that capitalist society had not changed the class antagonisms of feudal society, but merely changed the names. More and more, society was splitting into two factions, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat were a necessity of capitalist society yet would inevitably overcome the bourgeoisie. Past: In the play, the past is associated with the South and its aristocratic ideals. Present: In the play, the present is the urban, industrialised world of the rising proletariat. Plastic Theatre: Plastic theatre is the method Williams employs to heighten awareness of certain events or characterisations. Plastic theatre is the use of props or staging to impress upon the audience more abstract ideas. It is often very blatant and seems unrealistic, but this just adds to the drama of the scene. For instance, an audience watching the play only have a few seconds to pick up on metaphorical connections, whereas whilst reading the play you can examine Williams' stage directions in detail. Realism: Began in France in the 1850's after the French Revolution and in response to Romanticism. Realism rejected Romanticism's emphasis on exotic and exaggerated emotionalism, instead focussing on typical contemporary people in believable and real situations. Such reality is often ugly. Expressionism: A reaction to realism at the birth of the 20th century. It sought to portray the inner, psychological life of the characters and championed poetic dialogue over plot, structure and characterisation. American Dream: The belief that all men are equal and can succeed equally

3 Now have a look at the Futurist Manifesto I have given you. It was written in 1909, thirty years before the play. This is a serious manifesto, produced around the same time as movements such as expressionism and feminism were taking off, as part of the wider modernist movement. Sixty years before this was written, both Marx's Communist Manifesto and Darwin's Origin of the Species were published. What is right or wrong about the Futurist Manifesto?

4 MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM 1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. 2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt. 3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. 4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. 5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit. 6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. 7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man. 8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed. 9. We want to glorify war the only cure for the world militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman. 10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice. 11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

5 June 09, 2013 What would you rather own: something of vast beauty, or something of massive value?

6 Where does your idea of value come from? Does social background drive your value systems?

7 What was the world like when Williams was writing? Were the social issues any different to those that dominate my world? Who cares?