Bolognese Vera

Literature and Peace

TitleLiterature and Peace

ObjectiveFinding out how a literally text may promote peace

MaterialsW. SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth, Mursia 1971 (parallel text) ”W. SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 (parallel text)S. SASSOON, TheyS. SASSOON, Glory of WomenW. OWEN, Futility, from The Collected Poems, 1963.

Working Method

Textual analysis (finding relationship between text and peace)

Class discussions

W. SHAKESPEARE

• He was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon

• He married Anne Hathaway and had three children

• In 1580s he moved to London and become first actor and after playwright for the “King’s Men”

• He died in 1616 in Stratford

SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES

• In his greatest tragedies (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello) the themes of war and search for inner peace are always present also in the meaning of peace of the kingdom.

• In Macbeth especially the peace of the kingdom is strictly connected to the king’s inner peace

• Shakespeare lived in a period of changes and civil war

• Queen Elizabeth declared Catholicism and Judaism illegal.

• All the people who were not Anglican were persecuted

• James first unified the crowns of England and Scotland

• He practiced the theory of absolute monarchy and the divine right of Kings.

• This situation caused an increasing hostility on the side of Parliament towards the monarchy.

• All this led to the Civil War in 1642

MacbethPLOT

• The tragedy is about a general called Macbeth who, following a witches’ prophecies, murders his King to take his place.

• The sense of guilt makes him and his wife mad

• In the end both die in tragic ways

Peace• In the beginning of the

tragedy order and peace reign in the kingdom: Macbeth and the other generals are loyal to Duncan

• Macbeth’s ambitions lead him to kill his King

• He breaks the balance and brings chaos and war in the kingdom

The word “peace” occurs

eleven times in Macbeth

• Witches: “Peace! – the charm’s wound

up”

• Lady Macbeth: “Shake my fell purpose,

nor keep peace between th’effect and it”

• Macbeth: “Pr’ythee, peace”

• Lady Macbeth: “- Hark! – Peace”

• Macbeth: “Put rancours in the vessel of

my peace, only for them”

• Macbeth: “Better be with the dead, whom

we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace”

• Lenox: “But, peace!”

• Malcom: “Nay, had I power, I should pour

the sweet milk of concord into Hell, uproar

the universal peace, confound all unit of

earth”

• Macduff: “The tyrant has not batter’d at

their peace?”

• Rosse: “No; they were well at peace when I

did leave ’em”

The word peace is used with

different connotations• In 4 cases it is used as an invitation to

make silence

• 3 times “peace” refers to characters’

usual living conditions

• Twice it is used to refer to Macbeth’s and

Lady Macbeth’s inner peace

• Only in 1 case it refers to universal

peace

Peace and Death

• The word “peace” does not occur in

Act V when the sense of guilt has

already made Macbeth mad and

peace seems to be an unreachable

condition.

• Peace seems to be something that

everyone desires but no one can get

it if not through death

What did Shakespeare want to communicate to his contemporaries

with Macbeth?

• The tragedy ends with Malcom bringing peace again in the kingdom.

• He is seen as the only person deserving the crown because he is Duncan’s son.

The King as representative of

natural order

• With Macbeth, Shakespeare paid homage to his King James I and invited to obey him.

• He represented the monarchy and the King as warrants of peace in the kingdom.

What message can be inferred from Macbeth?

• Macbeth loses the control of the situation and he is entrapped in an endless spiral of murders and blood that make him mad.

• Reading Macbeth you can understand violence only causes only further violence.

And what about today?

Nowadays you can be see conflicts in Africa, in Israel, Palestine and many other battle fields like Iraq,….

Hamlet• “To be or not to be” to act or not to act.

• Does Hamlet have to kill his uncle to revenge his father? He does not know.

• He asks himself why men have to bear all life bad situations when they could kill themselves?

The only answer he finds is because they

fear death

• The rhetorical questions suggest a person torn by the difficulty to face duties and is looking for a way out.

•Even if Hamlet does not seem scared by death,he does not have the courage to kill himself.

Hamlet and Peace

Peace

• deep sleep when nobody and nothing can upset you. • place where you may even find the redemption (like

Macbeth)

Hamlet can find his inner peace through death

a far, beautiful land from which no traveller returns

Peace in Shakespeare

•In Shakespeare’s tragedies peace is strictly connected to the natural order of things

•Every change can break social balance and lead to war

•His plays provide the proof peace is a never-granted condition we should safeguard.

War never is a solution. It involves innocents who pay the price of human beings’ ambitions and desire for

power

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon

• He was born in 1886 and educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire and at Clare College, Cambridge.

• Motivated by patriotism, he became soldier just as the threat of World War I was realized.

• Horrified by war, the tone of his poems totally changed: details such as rotting corpses, mangled limbs, rubbish, cowardice and suicide are all trademarks of his poetry.

•In 1917, after his friend’s death, Sassoon made a stand against the conduct of war

•The military authorities decided that he was unfit for service and sent him to Craig Lockhart War Hospital till the end of the war.

•There he met Wilfred Owen.

•He died in 1967.

They• Structure: free verse. • It is arranged into two stanzas. • In the first one the Bishop tells what

he thinks about war and in the second stanza the boys reply to his words

• Rhyme scheme: ABABCC DEDEFF

STYLE ADDS TO MEANING

• Stanza one: alliteration of hard sounds like “ck” and “ght” underlines the difficulty of living during the war.

• Personification of Death: a soldiers’ comrade accompanying them in battle and supporting them when their time has come

• Stanza two: Soldiers 'pain is suggested by long vowel sound recalling men suffering.

• The idea is reinforced by the frequency of words belonging to the semantic field of

illness.

STYLE AND POINT- OF-VIEW

• Words from semantic field of religion: Bishop, Anti-Christ and God

• The key-word is change

• Both the Bishop and the boys agree on the idea that war changes people

• The Bishop means soldiers are honourable and brave men, the nation’s pride

Message• The boys mean they are wounded in

their body but mainly in their mind• The poem criticizes not only war itself but

especially powerful men, like the Bishop, who cares only about honour and victory neglecting soldiers’ suffering

Glory of Women

• Structure: Petrarchan Sonnet.

• The octave conveys women’s distorted view of war.

• The sestet: view of those who fought in war.

• Rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFG EFG

• Long vowel sounds: “leave”, “believe”, “redeems”, “delight”, “blind”. They sound as if somebody is calling for help.

STYLE AND MEANING

Octave: abstract words like “chivalry”, “disgrace”, “delight” and “laurelled memories” convey women’s idea of war. Alliterations: “dirt and danger” and “distant ardours” provide a different image of the situation, close to the soldiers’.

In the first line the word “home” makes clear soldiers' desire.

STYLE AND MEANING II

• SestetSestet: concrete, British rooted words belonging to the semantic field of war.

• Invocation “O German mother” is addressed to all British, and maybe to all women who have a distorted perception of war.

• The poet’s idea of war is expressed in the word “mud”.

Peace in Sassoon• Av realistic description of soldiers’ true

life at the battle front.

• Reporting the war’s horrors the real consequences of the war.

• Invites us to think about people’s sense of belonging to the same great family: humanity

Wilfred Owen

• He was born in 1893 in Shropshire

• After some traumatic experiences in battle Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital

• There he met Sassoon who encourage his passion for poetry.

• Owen was killed in action in 1918, only one week before the end of the war

A Poet’s Statement

• First sentence immediately draws the reader’s attention.

• The poet his thought about heroes: there are no heroes in war

• Abstract nouns underline people’s common idea about war but that really have nothing to share with conflicts.

• War is concrete, like the deaths it causes

• Owen: “The Poetry is in the pity [of War]” war is too cruel and horrible to give space to such a beautiful thing like Poetry

• Word “elegies” conveys feelings of suffering and sacrifice

Style and Meaning

• Owens's poems can only console his generation but are a warning for the next one.

• This is the reason why he must be truthful even if this implies being crude

FutilityStructure: organized into two stanzas. 1st stanza tells the soldier’s story. 2nd stanza the poet asks himself some rhetorical questions.

STYLE AND MEANING•First stanza: Opposition between the words “sun” and “snow”.

•“Sun” a metaphor for life •“snow” refers to death.

“until this morning and this snow”. The sun can defeat death and give life

again, but the poet considers it impossible as you can understand by the modal

“might”.

STLYE AND MEANING• Second stanza: why can’t the sun

awake a corpse “still warm”.

• Were men created from clay to die?• Was it for this reason the sun Awoke

the Earth?

• Message: We have some extraordinary things like the Earth, the sun and above all our life, why do we want to destroy them with war?

My Conclusions

In Shakespeare’s tragedies, in Sassoon’s and Owen’s poems the main theme is not peace, rather it is the absence of peace and all the horror it brings forth

in all ages peace has been considered the greatest of blessing, something to defend and to protect

• Our task is to work for peace, not to fight for it because, as

Gandhi said, “non-violence is infinitely

superior than violence”