Joyce's Dublin: Subjective Time and Epiphanies, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Italiano

Scarica Joyce's Dublin: Subjective Time and Epiphanies e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Italiano solo su Docsity! THE MODERN NOVEL: 1. The origins of the English novel - The English novel is bourgeois in its origin - Favourite theme : the gain or loss of a social status - The novelist is a mediator between his characters and the reader - Events and incidents are related in an objective way in chronological order 2. The shift from Victorian to modern novel Caused by - gradual but substantial transformation of British society - pressing need for different forms of expression → they forced novelists into a position of moral and psychological uncertainty The noVEliSt became a mediator between the unquestioned values of the past and the confused present ‘Realism’ shifted from society to man -> a limited creature whose moral progress was inferior to advances in technology 3. The birth of the modern novel New concept of time and new theory of the unconscious contributed to the birth of the modern novel Beginning of 20th century -> the modern novelist: ● rejected omniscient narration; ● experimented new methods to portray individual consciousness; ● gave more importance to subjective consciousness; ● understood impossibility to reproduce the complexity of the human mind with traditional techniques 4. The psychological novelists Interested in the development of the character’s mind and human relationships The most important are: - Joseph Conrad → the mystery of human experience - David Herbert Lawrence → the liberating function of sexuality - Edward Morgan Forster → complexity of human relationships and contrast between two different cultures 5. The new concept of time Time perceived subjective and inner → distinction between past and present = meaningless psychologically - Absence of a well-structured plot with a chronological sequence of events - The passing of time didn’t reveal the truth about characters 6. The stream of consciousness American psychologist William James coined the term ‘stream of consciousness’ in Principles of Psychology = “Continuous flow of thoughts and sensations that characterise the human mind” 7. The interior monologue Writers, like Joyce and Woolf , adopted the interior monologue to represent the unspoken activity of the mind 1) INTERIOR MONOLOGUE → verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon 2) STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS → the psychic phenomenon itself 8. Main features of interior monologue ● Immediacy → this distinguishes it both from soliloquy and dramatic monologue, where conventional syntax is respected ● Absence of introductory expressions like ‘he thought, he said’ ● Presence of 2 levels of narration → external to the character’s mind and internal ● Lack of chronological order ● Use of subjective time ● Absence of rules of punctuation ● Lack of formal logical order 9. Indirect interior monologue Characterised by the devices: ● Author is present within the narration → character’s thoughts presented both directly and by adding descriptions, comments and introductory phrases to guide the reader through the narration ● Characters stay xed in space while his consciousness moves freely in time ● Everything happens in the present in the character’s mind → ‘inner time’ preferred to ‘external time’ 10. Interior monologue with 2 levels of narration James Joyce’s Ulysses for example is characterised by 2 levels of narration - Objective, external level of narration with 3rd-person narrator - Regular sentences with subjects, verbs and complements in right order - 2nd level of narration within the character’s consciousness - Irregular statements with elision of subjects and verbs, and reversal of normal order of words 11. Interior monologue with the mind level of narration In this kind of interior monologue the character’s thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events From the rst to last word no external element interrupts Molly’s monologue in the nal chapter of Ulysses ➢ Narrator disappears ➢ Molly’s thoughts are free to move backwards ➢ Absence of punctuation The dead IMAGERY → symbolic antithesis: living vs dead light vs darkness warmth vs cold present vs past SYMBOLS: - the snow = a desire to change in Gabriel - the falling snow = heaven or death reached by people at the end of their life - Gabriel’s journey to the west = better to pass into that world, in the glory of some passion, than fade with age PROTAGONISTS → Gabriel Conroy , an embodiment of Joyce himself, and Gretta , his wife Gabriel’s marriage is suffering from paralysis Epiphany → the song “The Lass of Aughrim” reminds Gretta of a young man, Michael Furey, who died for her when he was 17 → Gabriel understands he is deader than Michael Furey in Gretta’s mind A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ● Indenite article ‘A’ → the novel is only one of all the possible interpretations of the subject ● Setting → Dublin ● Semi-autobiographical novel, published in book form in 1916 ● Divided into 5 chapters → spiritual evolution of a young Irish writer, Stephen Dedalus, a ctional alter-ego of Joyce, from childhood to maturity THE HERO: Like Stephen Dedalus: - Joyce had a religious mother; - Joyce was the eldest of 10 children and received his education at Jesuit schools; - Joyce had experiences with prostitutes during his teenage years and struggled with faith; - Joyce left Ireland to pursue the life of a poet and writer ● His name: “Stephen” → name of the Christian martyr → he is a martyr to art “Dedalus” → the mythological character He must escape from the social, political labyrinth of Dublin’s life to reach the neutrality of art ● His transformations: From a shy boy to a bright student who understands social interactions From innocence to corruption From sinner to devout Catholic From religiousness, to devotion to art and beauty STYLE: ● Begins with a 3rd-person narrator and ends with 1st-person ● The narrative → not continuous but fragmented, with gaps in the chronology ● Characters and events based on real ones but ltered through the consciousness of a ctional character (Stephen) ● The characters’ inner lives represented by experimenting with points of view We see the world as Stephen does ● The 3rd-person narrator disappears → use of free direct speech → to let the reader see, hear and feel what Stephen is experiencing ● Different languages and styles → linked to each phase of Dedalus’s evolution Setting → the beach Epiphany → image of wading girl reveals Stephen’s transition from the belief in God to aesthetic beauty Poetic language → expressions linked to sight and hearing → musical devices Free direct speech Ulysses ● Published in 1922 ● Setting in time → a single day, Thursday, 16th June 1904 ● Setting in place → Dublin ● Detailed account of ordinary life on an ordinary day ● Theme → moral → human life is suffering but also struggling to seek the good THE RELATION TO THE ODYSSEY: ➢ Odyssey → a structural framework for Ulysses ➢ Characters and events arranged around Homeric model: Leopold = Odysseus; Molly = Penelope; Stephen = Telemachus ➢ Divided into: Telemachiad; Odyssey; Nostos CHARACTERS: ● Leopold Bloom → common man; he stands for the whole of mankind ● Molly Bloom → Leopold’s wife; she stands for flesh, sensuality, fecundity ● Stephen Dedalus → pure intellect; he embodies every young man seeking maturity. THE MYTHICAL METHOD: - Linked to the progress made by psychology; ethnology and anthropology - Parallel with Odyssey and provided the book with a symbolic meaning - Homer’s myth → used to express the universal in the particular - Created a new form of realism A REVOLUTIONARY PROSE: Collage technique: - Stream of consciousness technique - Cinematic technique - Dramatic dialogue - Juxtaposition of events - Question and answers Language → puns, paradoxes, images, interruptions, symbols, slang expressions; different linguistic registers to give voice to the mind THE FUNERAL: Leopold attends a funeral Interior monologue → 2 levels of narration: - 1st level: actions narrated from the outside → neutral point of view - 2nd level: Leopold’s thoughts → Bloom’s point of view Action takes place in his mind No difference between past, present and future ULYSSES AND THE VICTORIAN NOVEL: Victorian novel Ulysses Setting in time and place Victorian towns (London); English countryside. Dublin. Narrative technique Third-person narrative technique. Stream-of-consciousn ess technique. Subject matter Realistic, naturalistic. The character's mind. Characters Presented from the outside. Presented from the inside. Language Realistic and concrete. Language of the mind.  WOOLF VS JOYCE: WOOLF: - WOOLF’S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control → maintains logical and grammatical organisation - MOMENTS OF BEING Rare moments of insight during daily life when the characters can see reality behind appearances JOYCE: - JOYCE’S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way - EPIPHANIES Sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object → self-realisation of the character Virginia's Farewell Letter to Her Husband: “Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t ght any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will, I know. You see, I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.” GEORGE ORWELL LIFE ● Born Eric Blair in India in 1903, he was the son of a minor colonial ofcial ● Orwell was educated at Eton, in England, where he began to develop an independent-minded personality , indifference to accepted values, and professed atheism and socialism ● On leaving college, he started to work for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (1922-1927) ● He returned to England and he devoted himself to writing full time, publishing his works with the pseudonym of George Orwell ● He married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in 1936 ● In December 1936 he went to Catalonia with his wife to report on the Spanish Civil War ● He joined the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unication and fought on the Aragon front ● Back in England, the Orwells adopted an infant child and called him Richard ● In 1941 Orwell joined the BBC , broadcasting cultural and political programmes to India ● In 1943 he resigned and became the literary editor of The Tribune , an influential socialist weekly ● He died of tuberculosis in 1950 WORKS Animal Farm (1945) ➔ made him internationally known and nancially secure Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) ➔ his most original novel THE ARTIST’S DEVELOPMENT Rejection of his English background, he accepted new ideas and impressions Conflict between middle-class education and emotional identication with the working class The role of the artist is to inform, to reveal facts and draw conclusions from them -> social function SOCIAL THEMES Influence of Dickens in the choice of: - Social themes - Realistic language - Misery caused by poverty - Deprivation of society He criticises totalitarianism, the violation of liberty and tyranny in all its forms Animal farm Historical background -> Animal farm is Orwell’s reaction to: > Stalin’s Purge Trials (1930s) > Stalin’s signature of the non-aggressio In December 1936 he went to Catalonia with his wife to report on the Spanish Civil Warn pact with Hitler (1939) > The book expresses Orwell’s disillusionment with totalitarianism in the form of an animal fable > It is a dystopia influenced by Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) PLOT - Short narrative set on a farm - A group of oppressed animals, led by Napoleon , overcome their cruel master and set up a revolutionary government - Napoleon’s leadership becomes a dictatorial regime - All the Seven Commandments are abandoned and only one remains: ‘all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others’ MEANING ● Parallel with the history of the USSR between 1917 and 1943 ● Each animal symbolises a precise gure or representative type ● Animal Farm is not only a satire on the Soviet Union, but a satire on dictatorship in general, as the name ‘Napoleon’ shows THE ANIMALS Besides being a symbol, each animal possesses the traits of its species HISTORY AS A FABLE Animal Farm shows how the initial idealism of the revolution gradually decayed into inequality , hierarchy and nally dictatorship This decay of the revolution is always seen from the community’s point of view THE REVOLUTION ● Animal Farm does not attack the original ideals of the Revolution but the ways in which they were betrayed ● Gradually, the privileges and abuses of the old regime are restored in a systematic, tyrannical form: this is what Orwell means by totalitarianism (each step violates some revolutionary principle of the Seven Commandments) DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKING CLASS From different points of view through different animals RELIGION Orwell remains conventionally socialist in portraying religion The raven Moses, who is Mr Jones’s favourite pet, derives its name from the Hebrew word ‘lawgiver’. When the revolution turns conservative and nationalistic, Napoleon brings the raven back, as Stalin brought back the Russian Orthodox Church FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD LIFE: ● Born in Minnesota in 1896 (USA) ● American dream ● Studied in a Catholic boarding school in New Jersey (spiritualism but also pragmatism ) ● Entered Princeton University to complete his degree in 1913 ● Joined the army when the United States entered WWI ● Married Zelda Sayre in 1920 and settled in New York (rich life but also full of debts) ● They went to Europe in 1922 and spent some time in Paris and on the French Riviera ● Back in the USA, he started to write lm scripts to pay his debts ● Died of a heart attack in 1940 works: ➢ 1920 – This Side of Paradise ➢ 1922 – Tales of e Jazz Age ➢ 1922 – The Beautiful and Damned ➢ 1925 – The Great Gatsby ➢ 1934 – Tender is e Night The Great Gatsby plot The protagonist is James Gatz, from a humble Midwestern family. He tries to rise above poverty, he changes his name to Jay Gatsby. Jay falls in love with Daisy, a beautiful supercial woman who eventually marries Tom Buchanan, a wealthy (rich) brutal man. Gatsby makes a fortune as a bootlegger. He rents a mansion on the fashionable shore of Long Island, on the opposite side of the bay to Daisy’s house. He gives fabulous parties hoping to see Daisy one day. Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker from the Midwest, is Gatsby’s neighbour and Daisy’s cousin. Thanks to him, Daisy and Jay meet again and have an affair. One day Daisy runs over Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, while driving. She does not stop, and Gatsby hides the car. Myrtle’s husband nds out that Gatsby’s car killed his wife. Gatsby does not protest his innocence because He wants to defend Daisy, but she is reconciled with her husband. Gatsby is nally shot in his garden by Myrtle’s husband. Nick arranges his funeral but nobody comes. CHARACTERS JAY GATSBY - A mysterious character = we don’t know where he gets his money - He seldom takes part in the lavish parties he organises - Rich and attractive (the new Oscar Wilde), with some secret hidden in his past - He has the stature of a romantic hero who dies for his dream - He also embodies the self-made man who tries to recreate the past through the power of money and is nally destroyed Nick Carraway - Both observer and participant in the novel - The only character to show and hold onto a sense of morals and decency - Represents the outsider that Fitzgerald felt himself to be - Comes from the West, and returns there by the end of the novel - Through Carraway, Fitzgerald shows his fondness for the West, which he regards as more moral than the East - Objective from the beginning to the end Daisy Buchanan - She represents Gatsby’s enchanted object of desire - She is very moody, theatrical and impulsive - She is characterised by meanness of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalty Tom Buchanan - He comes from a very wealthy midwestern family - He is Gatsby’s rival for Daisy’s love - He is unfaithful, arrogant and aggressive The American-ness of the novel the move from West to East; It is emphasised by some themes: ● the confrontation between the romantic ideals of courage, honour and beauty and the corrupted world of money ● the relationship of Gatsby’s material achievements, the myth of ‘rags to riches’ ● the tremendous growth of the car industry ● the corrupting effects of Prohibition ● the poverty of spiritual life in America during its most hedonistic decade style ■ Nick Carraway is a retrospective narrator; after going through an experience, he looks back on it with a better understanding ■ All the events and characters of the story are presented from Nick’s point of view ■ Chronological order is rejected → fragmentation of time and flashbacks to represent the inner world of the characters and the way knowledge is acquired in real life ■ Gatsby’s personality is not developed through explicit statement but rather through implication ■ frequent appeals to the senses evocative use of colours ■ poetic devices such as repetition, simile and metaphor ■ The language blends realism and symbolism Symbolic images The description of the Jazz Age is full of symbols: - Gatsby’s car = destructive power of money - The valley of ashes = emotional and spiritual sterility - Gatsby’s house = celebration of his success during the parties, of his loneliness when empty The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock at East Egg symbolises: - Gatsby’s hopes and dreams - the gap between the past and the present - the physical and emotional distance between Gatsby and Daisy - the ‘American dream’ BLINDNESS – is another central theme Blindness is another central theme. The characters in the novel do not wish to sce. Daisy and the guests (0 Aordan, Daisy, Tom and Gatsby*s parties seek ont others drive carelessiy ure blindness in the form of ind to dunger in the selfish drunken pursuit of pleasure. TOO STTITA0A ITTSTRE TARE OETETiI