Inglese per la Moda [6 cfu] Prof. Federica Perazzini.

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1 Inglese per la Moda [6 cfu] Prof. Federica Perazzini

2 Presentazione del Corso e Nuclei Tematici Il corso si propone come un introduzione alla lingua e alla cultura inglese/anglo-americana nell ambito delle riflessioni sulla moda e la modernità tra XVIII secolo e contemporaneità. Nel corso dei vari incontri si procederà allo studio di un numero di testi fondamentali delle letterature di lingua inglese, analizzandone parallelamente la loro portata storico-teorica e la loro struttura linguistica. In questo modo, alla fine del corso lo studente non solo avrà acquisito una visione d insieme della storia culturale ed ideologica della moda inglese/anglo-americana ma avrà ottenuto, attraverso un lavoro seminariale di avviamento alla traduzione svolto in classe, anche una notevole dimestichezza nella comprensione e nell interpretazione di testi in lingua originale. Per ogni nucleo teorico affrontato corrisponderà quindi lo studio linguistico delle opere esemplificative dello stesso in base al seguente percorso:

3 Presentazione del Corso e Nuclei Tematici

4 Informazioni tecniche: Il Portale Big bang Per qualsiasi informazione, avvisi, orari, aule, esami, aggiornamenti: Nella sezione FASHION STUDIES ( index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101)

5 Bibliography

6 Quindi PRIMA di SCRIVERE UN LEGGETE BENE TUTTO Prima regola d oro

7 History of Words: clothing

8 History of Words: fashion

9 NGRAMs: Fashion & Style

10 1 st LESSON: Fashion and Modernity Fashion as a phenomenon [and the phenomenization itself] of Modernity Phenomenon = appearance, experiences, observable occurrence What is Modernity like? URBAN, INDUSTRIALIZED and CAPITALISTIC Why does Modernity speak English?

11 Modernity speaks English The years between 1789 and 1848 are years of extreme transformation throughout all Europe (E.Hobsbawm The Age of Revolution ) But the roots of such transformations can be found in XVIII century England were the first Industrial Revolution took place (let s say since 1764) England before any other country in Europe WHY?

12 The road to Industrialization The great revolution of was the triumph not of industry as such, but of capitalistic industry; not of liberty and equality in general but of the middle class or bourgeois liberal society; not of the modern economy or the modern state, but of the economies and states in a particular geographical region of the world whose center was the neighboring and rival states of France and Great Britain. Let us begin with the Industrial Revolution, that is to say, with Britain. [ ] some times in the 1780s, and for the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods and services. This is technically known to the economists as the take off into self-sustained growth.

13 What does self-sustained growth mean and where does it come from SURPLUS and AGRICOLTURAL REVOLUTION Agriculture was already prepared to carry out its three fundamental functions in an era of industrialization: to increase production and productivity, so as to feed rapidly rising non agricoltural population; to provide a large and rising surplus of potential recruits for the towns and industries; and to provide a mechanism for the accumulation of capital to be used in the more modern sectors of the economy. ENCLOSURE ACTS --- HIGH FARM --- YEOMEN and COUNTRY GENTRY ( ) (Norfolk system) (from free men who owned their own lands to capitalist farmers)

14 Surplus Demographic Growth Higher demand of clothes Consumerist revolution and value crisis AGRICULTURAL SURPLUS---led to an unprecedented DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH This increased the DEMAND of GOODS Especially Clothes Food, Clothes and Shelters (3 fundamental elements. But also 3 elements mostly affected by the consumerist revolution and the echoes of colonial trade) MORE PURCHASE POWER -MORE LUXURY GOODS MORE SOCIAL MOBILITY (progressive ideology)

15 Nial Ferguson (historian) claims that by 1750 most of English imports constituted in SUGAR, COFFE, TEA and CHOCOLATE (Uppers!!!) [from the Caribbean plantations and Indian imports] And FOREIGN LINEN (especially COTTON) Mainly imported from the U.S (up to 1860) and India. RAW MATERIALS and SYMBOLIC IDENTITIES Cotton was fundamental for both domestic use (house supply, linen, cases, curtains) and basic clothing (petticoat, waistcoat etc..) Silk came from limited French imports (Lyon) Wool originated from real domestic production (Northern England and Scotland)

16 Ingenious Machines: mechanizing spinning James Watt s rotary steam-engine required no more physics than had been available for the past part of the century. Particularly modest inventions from the scientific point of view, but absolutely avant-guard in terms of craftsmen experimental assembling capacity First spinning machines: 1764 James Hargreaves s spinning jenny (filatrice a più fusi) 1769 Richard Arkwright s water frame (filatrice idraulica) 1779 Samuel Crompton s spinning mule (ibrido tra spinning jenny e water frame) 1784 by James Watt s rotary steam-engine (brevetto del motore vapore) 1789 Edmund Cartwright s power loom.(telaio idraulico)

17 Evolutions Spinning Jenny 1764 Power Loom 1789

18 From the Ancient Trade to the Modern Factory TRAVELLING TAILORS (customers buy cloths from the merchants and the tailor sew the article in people s houses) SHOPKEEPING TAILORS (customers buy cloths from the merchants and take it to the shop) COTTAGE INDUSTRIES (weavers specialized workers. Buy cloths from the merchants and sew them in their factory-houses) FACTORIES (workers division of labor, especially women and child) Up to the second half of the XVIII century, LACE was still handcrafted and imported from Flanders (so it was a very rare, pricy and smuggling goods)

19 Fluid classes: clothing as capital In these same years The END of SUMPTUARY LAWS, increase of SOCIAL MOBILITY (due to the increase of people purchase power and the development of capitalistic economy) the EXPANSION of COLONIAL TRADE CLOTHS were still considered LUXURY GOODS but became accessible to most of population (both bourgeois and paid factory workers) thanks to the development of crime (cloth theft) second-hand trade or black market. For the first time The symbolic imagery of CLOTHING is emptied by the savage and indiscriminate force of CAPITAL

20 Defoe s London in Hogarth s eyes

21 Second hand clothing trade in XVIII century

22 PROGRESSIVE IDEOLOGY [ ] Una concezione del merito basata sulla stratificazione sociale del sangue e del lignaggio ad una incentrata sul concetto, preso in prestito dal protestantesimo di stampo calvinista, di merito come virtù individuale. Lo stesso significato della parola onore, come ricorda McKeon shifts from title of rank to goodness of character, una bontà d animo che Defoe, grande spettatore del suo tempo, attribuisce appunto ad una nuova tipologia di uomo che fa della sua onestà, virtù e devozione a Dio i presupposti del suo valore e della sua fortuna. Nasce quindi nelle parole e nelle osservazioni del grande padre del romanzo inglese la felice categoria del borghese gentiluomo: The Gentleman is to be represented as he really is [ ] I mean as a Person of Merit and Worth; a Man of Honour, Virtue, Sense, Integrity, Honesty, and Religion, without which he is Nothing at all... FIELDING: [ ] One known division of the people in this nation is into the nobility, the gentry, and the commonalty, what alterations have happened among the two former of these, I shall not at present inquire; but the last, in their customs, manners, and habits, are greatly changed from what they were the lower sort [of people] is changed the simplicity of their manners into craft; their frugality into luxury; their humility into pride, and their subjection into equality. [ ] the nobleman will emulate the grandeur of a prince and the gentleman will aspire to the proper state of the nobleman, the tradesman steps from behind his counter into the vacant place of the gentleman; nor doth the confusion end here; it reaches the very dregs of the people, who aspiring still to a degree beyond that which belongs to them.

23 PEPYS: Bringing home in a coach her n e w F e r r a d d i n w a i s t c o a t, i n Cheapside a man asked her whether that was the way to the Tower; and while she was answering him, another on the other side snatched away her bundle out of her lap and could not be recovered, but ran away with it; which vexes me cruelly, but it cannot be helped. FIELDING: [ ] if there were no receivers there would be no thieves, indeed could not the thief find a market for his goods, there would be an absolute end of several kinds of thefts; such as shoplifting, burglary, &c., the objects of which are generally goods and not money. Moll Flanders e la hybris borghese I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would work for her, and I would work very hard. Moll Flanders e l equivalenza gentleman/tradesman To be a gentlewoman was no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work. She even has a role model picked out, a woman who mends lace in town: She, says I, is a gentlewoman, and they call her Madam. Poor child, says my good old nurse, You may soon be such a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has had two bastards! I did not understand anything of that, but I answered, I am sure they call her Madam, and she does not go to service, or do housework. And therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a gentlewoman as that.

24 Moll becomes a thief Wandering thus about, I knew not whither, I passed by an apothecary s shop in Leadenhall Street, when I saw lie on a stool just before the counter a little bundle wrapped in a white cloth; beyond it stood a maid-servant with her back to it, looking towards the top of the shop, where the apothecary s apprentice, as I suppose, was standing upon the counter, with his back also to the door, and a candle in his hand, looking and reaching up to the upper shelf for something he wanted, so that both were engaged mighty earnestly, and nobody else in the shop. This was the bait; and the devil, who I said laid the snare, as readily prompted me as if he had spoke, for I remember, and shall never forget it, twas like a voice spoken to me over my shoulder, Take the bundle; be quick; do it this moment. It was no sooner said but I stepped into the shop, and with my back to the wench, as if I had stood up for a cart that was going by, I put my hand behind me and took the bundle, and went off with it, the maid or the fellow not perceiving me, or any one else. [ ] When the bundle was made up for, or on what occasion laid where I found it, I knew not, but when I came to open it I found there was a suit of childbed-linen in it, very good and almost new, the lace very fine; there was a silver porringer of a pint, a small silver mug and six spoons, with some other linen, a good smock, and three silk handkerchiefs, and in the mug, wrapped up in a paper, 18s. 6d. in money.