James Joyce's Dubliners: A Pioneering Modernist Novel - Prof. Pérez, Apuntes de Filología Inglesa

¡Descarga James Joyce's Dubliners: A Pioneering Modernist Novel - Prof. Pérez y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! THE MODERNIST NOVEL The English novel was essentially bourgeois in its origins, and throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was anchored in a social world, patterning its plots in terms of gain or loss of social status or fortune. Fortune, status, and marital position were all important for the Victorian novel. The novelist’s world was an assured one, however much he might criticize or wish to reform it. The view of what was significant in human affairs on which he based his selection of events to constitute the plot was a view shared with his readers; he never had the problem of wondering whether what was significant in his view was also significant in that of his readers. His standard of significance was public and agreed; whatever was important in a character’s fictional life was registered by public symbols as social, financial or institutional change. This presentation by the novelist of his world as a wholly objective world determined in large manner his technique. The loss of the confident sense of a common world, of a public view of what was significant in human action, had an effect on both the themes and the technique of fiction. An example is James Joyce’s view of the "epiphany", the sudden realization that some quite ordinary incident or situation or object encountered in daily experience has an intense symbolic meaning. The construction of a plot pattern based on such subtle and private interpretations of the significant in human affairs would necessarily take the novel out of the public arena of value in which it had hitherto moved. The novelist would then either have the problem of making convincing to the reader, while he reads, his (the novelist’s) own principle of selection and sense of significance, which might involve various kinds of technical innovations and subtleties (some of them imported from lyrical poetry, as Virginia Woolf did); or of presenting a world which did not depend on any single criterion of significance at all but in which everything interpenetrated everything else and the same event or character became important or trivial as the author’s view and way of presentation kept shifting (James Joyce was almost alone in adopting this method.) New concepts of time as flow and duration rather than a series of points moving chronologically forward, also influenced the twentieth-century novelist, particularly in his handling of plot structure. If time could not be properly conceived of as a series of moments moving forward in a steady progress, then the traditional conception of plot, which generally involved taking the hero through a sequence of testing circumstances in chronological order, would cease to satisfy. Further, new psychological ideas emphasized the multiplicity of consciousness, the simultaneous coexistence of several levels of consciousness and subconsciousness in which past experience was retained and by whose retention the whole of personality was coloured and determined. The truth about a character is the sum of his whole emotional experience, and that sum is always there, pervading and indeed constituting his consciousness. It is not therefore necessary to take a character through a series of testing circumstances to reveal the whole human truth about him; the proper exploration of his consciousness at any given moment in a very short space of time (say a single day) could reveal all his history and all his potentialities. For on this view a man is his history; nothing is lost, and his reaction to every new event is conditioned by the sum of his reactions to all earlier events. Thus retrospect is of the very stuff of present consciousness, and need not be formally introduced by set pieces of retrospect or by reported memory introduced by some phrase such as "this reminded him of...". Development depthwise rather than lengthwise becomes the logical technique. The novel had been moving toward a greater increase in psychological subtlety, or at least in the increase of the apparatus for psychological diagnosis, for some time. Henry James in particular had brought a new precision and complexity into the description of states of mind. But it was not until the 1910s and 1920s that the full impact of the three factors just discussed —the apparent collapse of a public standard of significance, new notions of time, and new notions of consciousness— made itself felt on the technique and themes of fiction. The isolation of the individual consciousness steadily became the most important psychological fact in a world from which public value seemed to have departed and where every individual was seen to be the prisoner of his unique stream of consciousness. The phrase "stream of consciousness" was coined in 1890 as a description of the flow of thought within the waking human mind. It was much used in the criticism of Modernist fiction in an effort to come to terms with a literature which boldly attempted to replicate or represent the flux of thought and feeling within a character without resorting to objective description or to conventional dialogue. The term refers to the flow of impressions, perceptions, and thoughts which stream unbidden through our minds. These impressions can be stimulated by something that happens to us or by subconscious impulses; the stream of consciousness can be illogical and random. We can be aware of various impressions in no particular order; past memories may intermingle with present actions or thoughts of the future; saying something to a friend may be quite different from the thoughts or impressions passing through the mind at the same time; sounds, smells and sights are all registered and may stimulate unpredictable feelings. For many modern novelists it became a central task to find a way of recording this kind of subjective "flow" in the language and form of the novel. The fragmentation of narration is often represented by unusual cohesion, or changes in the normal ways of linking sentences, paragraphs, and narration. This leads to unusual jumps, juxtapositions, and connections, often also marked by unusual or missing punctuation, which can create unexpected visual or graphological effects on the page. Stream of consciousness takes these effects to extremes, often abandoning cohesion, syntax, and punctuation and lexical correctness which previously brought order and clarity to narration. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Themes Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint of an observer. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic adulthood. The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him. The Pitfalls of Religious Extremism Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both of these lifestyles-the completely sinful and the completely devout-are extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human. Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest. The Role of the Artist A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's decision at the end of the novel-to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist-suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his decision, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and family commitment that the community places on its members. However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a voice to the very community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He recognizes that his community will always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will also convey the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the traditional forms of participation and membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to the community. The Need for Irish Autonomy Despite his desire to steer clear of politics, Stephen constantly ponders Ireland's place in the world. He concludes that the Irish have always been a subservient people, allowing outsiders to control them. In his conversation with the dean of studies at the university, he realizes that even the language of the Irish people really belongs to the English. Stephen's perception of Ireland's subservience has two effects on his development as an artist. First, it makes him determined to escape the bonds that his Irish ancestors have accepted. As we see in his conversation with Davin, Stephen feels an anxious need to emerge from his Irish heritage as his own person, free from the shackles that have traditionally confined his country: "Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made?" Second, Stephen's perception makes him determined to use his art to reclaim autonomy for Ireland. Using the borrowed language of English, he plans to write in a style that will be both autonomous from England and true to the Irish people. Motifs Music Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen's appreciation of music is closely tied to his love for the sounds of language. As a very young child, he turns Dante's threats into a song, " [A]pologise, pull out his eyes, pull out his eyes, apologise." Singing is more than just language, however-it is language transformed by vibrant humanity. Indeed, music appeals to the part of Stephen that wants to live life to the fullest. We see this aspect of music near the end of the novel, when Stephen suddenly feels at peace upon hearing a woman singing. Her voice prompts him to recall his resolution to leave Ireland and become a writer, reinforcing his determination to celebrate life through writing. UNIT 3: THE MODERNIST NOVEL: VIRGINIA WOOLF Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) argued for the potential freedom of the novel from commonly received understandings of plot, time, and identity. The task of the novelist, Woolf said, is to convey an impression of the "luminous halo" of life with as little mixture of the "alien and external" as possible. She defended new ways of rendering and designing the novel. She does more than present a challenge to the received idea of realism; she insists that the twentieth-century novelist could evolve a new fictional form out of a representation of the "myriad impressions" which daily impress themselves on the human consciousness. Fo her it was a matter of breaking free from an inadequate technique and a limited vision. She was highly critical of the Edwardians because, according to her, life escaped H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy or Arnold Bennett: materialists ... they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body ... they write of unimportant things ... they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and the enduring. Plot, character, comedy, tragedy, and the concentration on "love interest", the old conventional themes and categories, were no longer adequate to communicate the stream of the modern consciousness. Her novels attempt to "dissipate" character and to reintegrate human experience within an aesthetic shape or "form". She seeks to represent the nature of transient sensation, or of conscious or unconscious mental activity, and then to relate it outwards to a more universal awareness of pattern and rhythm. The momentary reaction, the impermanent emotion, the ephemeral stimulus, the random suggestion, and the dissociated thought are effectively "bent" into a stylistic relationship to something coherent and structured. Her attitude is primarily that of the innovator, experimenting, conscious of infinite possibilities, and ready to try anything. There is no such thing as "the proper stuff of fiction": "everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss." Fiction was a re-creation of the complexities of experience. Woolf’s particular preoccupation with time is closely related to her manifest interest in flux, a dissolution or dissipation of distinctions within a fluid pattern of change and decay, which she recognizes in nature and science as much as in the human psyche. Her universe, though effectively Godless, is not one deprived of imposed meaning and patterning. Virginia Woolf’s most complete representation of the life of a woman character’s mind in Mrs Dalloway (1925) is also her most thorough experiment with the new technique of interior monologue. The novel plays subtly with the problem of an identity which is both multiple and singular, both public and private, and it gradually insists on the mutual dependence and opposition of the perceptions of Clarisa Dalloway and the shell-shocked ramblings of a victim of the war, Septimus Warren Smith. The novel opens with the heroine planning to give a party. Parties bring people together but, do they really bring people together or is one lonelier still in a crowd? As she moves about London shopping, every encounter she has produces a response coloured by the whole texture of her earlier experience, so that as we follow her stream of consciousness we learn all of her previous history, or all that matters. The events of Mrs Dalloway’s day, artfully organized so as to project in a host of different ways the nature of this question of the possibilities of communication, are counterpointed against the events in the day of Smith and his wife, whom Mrs Dalloway never meets, but with whom she has a symbolic relationship. Smith goes mad because, as a result of his experiences in the First World War, he has lost all sense of contact with other people at all, is driven into the isolated emptiness of himself, and is dragged back by representatives of crude conventionality who imagine that by imposing their artificial social norms on him they can restore his sense of communication.