Scarica Appunti su James joyce e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 from a poor family. He attended University College in Dublin, demonstrating extraordinary academic abilities. In 1902 he went to Paris with the intention of becoming a doctor but here he left this idea and he chooses to began his career as a writer. Then he left Paris with his wife and went to Trieste, where they stayed for the following 10 years. The first collection of poetry Joyce published was "Camber Music", followed some years later by one of his most important works, "The Dubliners". In occasion of the First World War his family moved to the neutral Switzerland, where it remained until 1919; during this period he published "A portrait of the artist as young man", "Exiles" and "Ulysses", "Finnegans wake", in which he broke down English syntax and created its own polylinguistic vocabulary. He died in Zurich in 1941. The Dubliners It was published in 1914 and it is the first collection of short stories. It is a portrait of the lives of extraordinary people in Dublin; the stories are arranged into four groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity, public life. The main theme into all the short stories is the feeling of paralysis, as a result of being tied to antiquated and limited cultural and social traditions; this "handicap" is reflected into characters' relationship, in which free expression is inhibited by repressive moral codes. The characteristics Joyce's narrative elements are the descriptive realism, the absence of moralizing narrative voice, the description of characters' inner code and the use of symbolism. The Dead The Dead begins with an after Christmas dinner at the uncles' house of Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist, in which he brings with him his wife, Gretta. The house becomes a microcosm of Irish traditions and different generations, religions and political beliefs. Gabriel feels good, remembering the best moments of his marriage, but during the travel to the hotel, he realizes that his wife is crying because of an Epiphany she had and during which she remembered his true first love, Michael Furey, who she thinks died for her. During the listening of her wife’s memories, Gabriel has his own epiphany and when Gretta finally falls asleep, he have all the time to reflect about the insignificance of his own life and of those who are around him, staring to the snow that fells down on the outside of the window. The work can be considered realistic but also highly symbolic and it gives us a picture of characters’ inner thoughts. J. uses for the first time the indirect interior monologue, in order to describes Gabriel’s final reflections, provoked by an instant of intensity, a sudden revelation that J. called “Epiphany”, the moment in a story when a sudden spiritual awakening occurs; in fact the central element of the story is Gretta’s epiphany, provoked by a song she listened to, during the dinner. In a moment it is just like she went back to the time.
