Contesto generale  La novella di Cisti il fornaio è la seconda della sesta giornata del Decameron di Boccaccio. In questa giornata, tutte le novelle hanno un tema comune: il modo elegante e intelligente (con arte e garbo) con cui i personaggi riescono a rispondere a situazioni difficili, spesso grazie all’arguzia, alla prontezza di spirito o all’uso sapiente delle parole (i cosiddetti “motti”). La narratrice è Pampinea, una delle sette giovani protagoniste del Decameron, che introduce la novella con una riflessione: a volte la natura e la fortuna premiano persone di umili origini, dotandole di un'anima nobile e virtuosa, proprio come accade a Cisti. Trama in breve  Cisti è un fornaio fiorentino, quindi un uomo del popolo, ma di grande eleganza, educazione e intelligenza. Egli possiede un ottimo vino bianco, che desidera offrire a Geri Spina, un nobile fiorentino che ogni giorno passa davanti alla sua bottega insieme agli ambasciatori di papa Bonifacio VIII. Cisti però sa che, ...

Animal Farm , written by George Orwell , is a political fable that tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their cruel human master, hoping to create a society where all animals are equal, free, and happy. Inspired by the dream of the wise old pig Old Major, the animals overthrow the farmer Mr. Jones and take control of the farm, renaming it Animal Farm. At first, the animals work together to build an egalitarian community based on the principles of Animalism, summarized in the Seven Commandments painted on the barn wall. However, over time, the pigs—led by the cunning and power-hungry Napoleon—begin to seize control. They gradually assume privileges, manipulate language and truth, and use fear and propaganda to maintain power. Eventually, they become indistinguishable from the humans they once overthrew. This allegory clearly reflects the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of Stalinism. The animals represent different social and political groups...

  THE PLOT Nineteen Eighty-Four , written by George Orwell , is an anti-utopian, or dystopian, novel that describes a bleak and oppressive society in which human instincts, intelligence, and individual freedom are crushed by a ruthless and all-powerful political regime. The story depicts a totalitarian power that exerts complete control over individuals through advanced technology and psychological manipulation. At the head of this regime is Big Brother, a symbolic and omnipresent figure who embodies the government's authority. The novel explores the modern individual’s enslavement to mass media, surveillance, and propaganda. The novel is set in the year 1984, in a world divided into three superstates: Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia, which are in a state of perpetual war. Britain, referred to as Airstrip One, is a province of Oceania and is governed by a totalitarian dictatorship led by Big Brother. He is not just the ruler but also a constant presence: his image is everywhere, and...

  George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903 into a family of modest means. Although his family had aristocratic roots, their financial situation was precarious. Thanks to a scholarship, Orwell was able to study in England. At the age of eight, he was sent to a preparatory boarding school, and later he attended Eton College, one of the most prestigious schools in the country. At Eton, Orwell felt like an outsider, often treated poorly because he was not wealthy. This experience helped shape his lifelong sympathy for the underprivileged and his critical view of social hierarchies. After finishing his education, Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma in 1922. However, disillusioned with British colonialism and troubled by his role in enforcing it, he resigned from his post in 1927, later expressing his rejection of “every form of man’s dominion over man,” a theme explored in his first novel, Burmese Days (1934). Upon returning to ...

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882 and received her education at home, primarily through extensive reading in the library of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen , a prominent Victorian literary critic and philosopher. Her early intellectual development was influenced by frequent contact with scholars, critics, and exposure to classical studies, including Greek. The death of her mother in 1895 marked the beginning of a long struggle with depression and emotional instability, which would continue throughout her life. After the death of her father in 1904, Virginia and her siblings moved to the Bloomsbury area of London, where their home became a meeting place for a group of writers, artists, and intellectuals later known as the Bloomsbury Group . This group was characterized by its rejection of Victorian conventions, its liberal views on art, society, and politics, and its skepticism toward religion. In her later years, Woolf experienced recurring mental health crises, often marked ...

  Ulysses , written by James Joyce , first came out in Paris in 1992 through the efforts of Sylvia Beach, the owner of the famous Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop . However, in England the novel was banned for obscenity until 1936. Ulysses is one of the greatest examples of reworking of myth Odyssey in modernist literature. Joyce uses the epic model to stress the lack of heroism, ideals, love and trust in the modern world: the epic structure becomes a a mirror in which the modern wasteland is reflected. So, Joyce makes a parallelism between Homer's epic hero in the Odyssey and the events in the life of two ordinary people, Leopold Bloom and Sthephen Dedalus, in modern Dublin. The plot Ulysses tells the story of a day - June 16, 1904 - in the life of three characters: Leopold Bloom, a Dubliner of Jewish origin who works as an advertising agent; Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive young man with literature ambitions who feels frustrated by Irish provincial life; Molly Bloom, Leopold's wif...

“Dubliners” is a collection of fifteen short stories written by James Joyce in which the author analyses the failure of self-realisation of inhabitants of Dublin in biographical and in psychological ways. The novel was originally turned down by publishers because they considered it immoral for its portrait of the Irish city. Joyce treats in “Dubliners” the paralysis of will in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life. The paralysis of will is the courage and self-knowledge that leads ordinary men and women to accept the limitations imposed by the social context they live in. In “Dubliners” the style is both realistic - to the degree of perfectly recreating characters and idioms of contemporary Dublin - and symbolic – giving the common object unforeseen depth and a new meaning in order to show a new view of reality. Joyce defines this effect “epiphany” which indicates that moment when a simple fact suddenly explodes with meaning and makes a person realise his / her condi...