LESSON 1

  • Course presentation. This year English2 will be on Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. Written in 1931, over eighty years ago, it is still a very interesting book that tackles topics at the centre of the political and cultural debate in Italy and elsewhere. We will read and discuss the novel and the topics it is concerned with. To give you a general idea, BNW is about the clash between the State and the individual, it anticipates George Orwell’s 1984, it talks of a range of questions that span from eugenics and artificial procreationto welfare, to the dilemma between scientific progress and humanity.
  • Course requirements. Attendance is not compulsory but strongly recommended and will count for the final mark. Students are asked to write an essay of 9-10 pages (Times Roman 16 interlinea singola) on a topic related to the novel. The essay must start with the analysis of at least a passage from the novel and it must have a bibliography. The exam will consist of a discussion in English of the essay. Students are expected to have a good knowledge of the novel and the content of my lessons. Students must send the essay via email in a Word format (NOT PDF) at least six days before the exam.
  • Huxley’s life. H. was born in 1894 and died in 1965.He was born in England at the end of the Victorian Age and died in California at the height of the Hippies and the Flower Power – in a world radically different from the one he was born in. He lived through two World War, the beginning of the Cold War, the early Sixties. He died on the 22th of November 1963, the day John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.
  • His pedigree is quiteremarkable: his grandfather from his father side was Thomas Henry Huxleywhile his mother ‘s uncle was Matthew Arnold – i.e.one of the top scientist and one of the top literary critic of the Victorian Age. An intellectual aristocracy: the Bloomsbury group. Both were part of a liberal tradition with a strong belief in the value of science (Huxley) and culture (Arnold). Key concepts: liberalism, agnosticism, science and culture, conventions, tradition, discipline, gloom.
  • THH: born 1825, a selfmade scientist: his father lost his job and THH left school at the age of 10. He was the champion of Darwinism which bought into the public sphere. First interested in botany he then moved on to medicine. Travelled from 1846 to 1850 to New Guinea and Australia. In 1851 he receivedthe Gold Medal from the Royal Society for his work on marine invertebrates. In 1854 he became professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines. In 1879 he received an Honorary degree from Cambridge. He became famous in fields as different as biology, geology, Biblical criticism, educational reform: typically Victorian. Great supporter of Darwin (he called himself Darwin’s bulldog). At his death in 1895 more than a hundred obituaries.
  • MA: son of Thomas, the founder of “modern” British education, Matthew was born in 1822, Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857, poet and above all lit. critic, famous for his theory that poetry, and by inference literature and art, is a “criticism of life”. Arnold sees a sharp decline of religion due to the Industrial Revolution and doesn’t regret it, above all because he considers literature a valid alternative – art as a repository of spiritual value as opposed to material life: a view that had an enormous influence but was criticised in the 20th century. Yet a liberal critic – a forerunner of Bloomsbury, despite all their feelings against Victorianism. Died in 1888.
  • Aldous Huxley wanted to be a scientist but age 16 went almost blind while at Eton due to an eye infection: he had to give upstudying science and choose literature instead. Went to Oxford, met Lawrence and members of the Bloomsbury Group. First book of poetry in 1916. In 1923 his publisher offered him a three year contract that gave him some financial security. Got married and travelled the world with wife and child, living in Italy for many years hoping that the climate would help his eyesight. In 1928 Point Counter Point, his first best-seller. Wrote Brave New World in 4 months in 1931 – that is before Hitler and Stalin (one major difference with Orwell). In 1937 he moved for good to California where he worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood. In the Thirties also his “conversion” to some sort of personal religion mixing east and west (like E. M. Forster), a lifelong theme in his books. H. wrote hundreds of essays and many books on about everything under the sun (Victorian?). In the Fifties his experiments with drugs – LSD – Timothy Leary – the Grateful Dead, the Doors. Died in 1963 (Sheryl Crow).
  • In his last essay, “Shakespeare and Religion,” which he finished the day before dying, H. wrote about three ways in which people need to wake up. First, he said, we must realize that there is more to life than we commonly perceive by finding “ways in which to detect the whole of reality… We must be continuously on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.” Second, while we are searching for ultimate reality, we need to recognize that “we must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given to us.” And third, we must “somehow learn how to transform [the world] and trans figure it”. Thus on one hand H. is a descendant of empiricism, of the main tradition in English Literature, a tradition strongly linked to daily life and language that goes back to Bacon; on the other hand, among H.’s forefathers we can count a poet like Blake.
  • BNW: the plot.

Introduction. In the year 632 (A.F.), the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning is giving students a tour of the London Hatcheries. He shows them how the unborn, or “undecanted,” babies growing in bottles are efficiently produced on a factory production line, where the embryos are socially predestined and conditioned by being given mixtures of chemicals to enable them to take their assigned places in the caste system. After decantation, the babies are subjected to behaviorist conditioning, using Pavlov’s methods and hypnopaedia (sleep teaching). With the arrival of Mustapha Mond, one of the ten World Controllers, the students learn the history of their culture as he tells them about old things, such as families and wars. He concludes by explaining that conditioning instead of force is the way to control violent emotions.

Life in BWN.The scene shifts to Lenina Crowne and Henry Foster, who have been dating one another almost exclusively for four months. When Fanny, another factory worker, advises Lenina to follow society’s rules and be promiscuous, Lenina decides to date Bernard Marx. They plan to take a trip to the Savage Reservation in New Mexico. When Bernard visitsthe Director to get permission to travel, he learns that the Director took a trip to the reservation several decades earlier with a woman who had got lost and had never returned, and he discovers that the Director is thinking of deporting him to Iceland because of his nonconformist attitudes.

The Reservation.At the Reservation, they meet John, a blond, fair-skinned man whose mother, Linda, had come from London with a man named “Tomakin,” John’s father, who left her behind. John tells his life to Bernard. He knows how to read and owns two books—the works of Shakespeare and the manual for Beta Embryo-Storage Workers. He immediately falls in love with Lenina.

Back to London.Bernard takes John and Linda back to London. When the Director prepares to banish Bernard, Bernard introduces Linda and John, who calls the Director “My father”, causing the Director to resign in shame. Linda is shunned because she is an old, obese, and a mother. John becomes a celebrity. Bernard becomes popular, and he delights in his success. But John quickly becomes disillusioned and soon refuses to go to Bernard’s parties, which destroys Bernard’s reputation. During this time, Lenina has become infatuated with John. When she makes sexual advances, he no longer idolizes her and angrily drives her away.

Rebellion and suicide.After Linda dies John, highly agitated, destroys the soma being given to some lower caste members and tries to make them understand that it is a poison. A riot results, and Bernard and Helmholtz, another discontented intellectual, try to help him. After the police restore order, the three rebels appear before Mond. He and John exchange ideas about civilization. Bernard and Helmholtz are exiled to an island, but the Controller, wanting to do more experimentation with the Savage, refuses to let John go with them. Not wishing to be the subject of experiments, John retreats to a deserted lighthouse outside London, where the people from London pursue him. When Henry and Lenina arrive with others, John joins the hysterical crowd in “a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality”. The next day, he realizes what he has done and hangs himself.