Scarica James Joyce: A European Artist from Dublin e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce LIFE He was educated in Jesuit schools in Dublin and went to University College, where he graduated in modern languages. He had no interest in movements for Irish independence but was interested in European culture and considered himself a European rather than an Irishman. He left Dublin when he was 22: he spent some time in Paris, then back in Ireland he met Nora Barnacle and went to live with her in Italy, Trieste, where he worked as an English teacher. He became friends with Italo Svevo. With Nora Barnacle he had two children, Giorgio and Lucia. They finally got married in 1931. He had financial problems while living in Trieste. Some of his works were considered obscene and published many years after they were written. He left Trieste because of the war and moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1941. Nora Barnacle and their two children, Giorgio and Lucia. MAIN WORKS • He first published a collection of poems: Chamber Music (1907) • Dubliners, a collection of short stories, was written in 1905 but published only in 1914. • 1916: A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a semi- autobiographical novel. • Ulysses, a novel published in Paris in 1922 • 1939: the novel Finnegans Wake. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF HIS WORKS Although Joyce chose to leave Ireland, it is the setting of most of his works, especially Dublin, seen from the point of view of a European, not of an Irishman. Dublin is seen as a place where true feelings and compassion for others do not exist, people are selfish and cruel. • He wanted to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people. • The lives of ordinary Dubliners represent in general man’s mental, emotional and biological reality. We can see how the artist’s isolation and detachment from society by: - his task, which is to render life objectively, in order to give back to the readers a real image of it. He also uses different points of view and narrative techniques. - greater importance given to the inner world of the characters. - time —>perceived as subjective. EVOLUTION OF JOYCE’S STYLE Dubliners (1914) was characterised by: • Realism Dubliners • Disciplined prose • Different points of view • Free-direct speech • Epiphany • Mixture of symbolism and realism In his later works (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake) he gradually developped more experimental techniques such as: •interior monologue with two levels of narration • extreme interior monologue (without punctuation) Dubliners It was published in 1914 in the newspaper The Irish Homestead by Joyce, with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus. It consist of 15 short stories, and all of them are set in Dublin, because he said that this city was the centre of paralysis. Dubliners are described as afflicted people, slaves of their religious, political and cultural habits and of their narrow-mindedness. While most Victorian writes celebrated the developments in civilisation, Joyce was hostile to city life. The stories are arranged into four groups: They don’t focus an action, but on moments of intensity (“epiphanies”), and lead to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES AND THEMES • Joyce uses realistic, concise, detailed descriptions. • His realism is combined with symbolism: we can find religious symbolism, colour symbolism. • He wants to take the reader beyond the surface of reality and he does it by using the technique of the epiphany—> ‘the sudden spiritual manifestation’ of an interior reality. EPIPHANY Joyce’s aim—> to take the reader beyond the usual aspects of life through epiphany, which is the special moment in which a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation or an episode lead the character to a sudden self-realisation about himself / herself or about the reality surrounding him / her. Actually understanding the epiphany in each story is the key to the story itself. The epiphany is a moment of revelation both for the reader and the character The main theme of Dubliners is paralysis, and we can find: -Physical paralysis: caused by external forces -Moral paralysis: linked to politics, religious and culture The climax of the stories—> the coming to awareness by the characters of their own paralysis.
