Scarica James Joyce: Irish Modernist Author of 'Dubliners' and 'Ulysses' and His Techniques e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writes in early 20th century. He was a modernist avant-garde and so he rejected older types of novels, full of conservatives values and extreme realism, and he felt the strong need to reflect on the complexity of the human mind working and the apparent irrationality of modern urban life. His aim was to represent the human condition as a universal and objective reality, so his concerns were not limited to the present time or to the problems of the contemporary society. His conception of the artist’s task made him preserve a detached and objective vision of life, putting him apart from the questions of the time and the great political, religious, or moral causes; not only he refused to take a share in movements supporting the Irish Independence or the Irish Cultural Renaissance, but he broke every link with the past by resolving to live abroad in order to acquire a cosmopolitan outlook. Joyce introduced the novelty of the technique of the «stream of consciousness» in the English novel, but also employed a wide range of stylistic and linguistic innovation to express complex and multiple meanings. In the linguistic field he was a great experimenter and tried to relate man’s predicament in works of deep insight and extreme originality. STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS The stream of consciousness is a literary technique which consists in reproducing the free flow of thoughts, feelings and sensations of the characters without comment by the author. This is a technique similar to that of the interior monologue, which can be direct or indirect. In the Joyce's works is very frequent the use of interior monologue, both direct and indirect. Through this technique, the writer almost disappears and the readers find themselves directly inside a character’s mind. DUBLINERS Joyce’s first great portrait of Dublin life came with Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories. It is a penetrating depiction of the stagnation and paralysis of the Irish middle class life in and around Dublin, presented in four stages: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. Characters accept their condition because they are not aware of it. All Dubliners are spiritually weak people, they are slaves of their familiar, moral, cultural, religious and political life. The hearth of the whole collection is the revelation of the paralysis to its victims, and the failure to find a way out of it. The peculiar technique used is the epiphany, coined by Joyce himself: it is a sudden revelation of a strong reality caused by a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation. According to his task to reproduce the deep and hidden meaning of the life, the epiphany represents the key of the story itself. Each story is told from the prospective of a character and so the interior monologue is widely used: it is the presentation of protagonist’s thoughts without any interfering agency. Thanks to it, readers acquire direct knowledge of who was speaking. Linguistic register is varied: it suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters. THE “EPIPHANY” IN “DUBLINERS” The style of the book is essential realistic with a scrupulous cataloguing of detail, the ability to create a sense of place - the Dublin which is the stories 'setting - and remarkable moments of sudden insight which are one of the characteristics of Joyce 's art. He called the moments of insight "epiphanies". The original meaning of the term "Epiphany" is, of course, the showing of the Christ child to the Magi: But Joyce adopts this expression to signify a sudden revelation, the moment in a novel or story when a sudden spiritual awakening is experienced in which all the petty details, thoughts, gestures, objects, feeling, etc., come together to produce a new sudden awareness. In other words, there is an epiphany when details, or moments, buried for years in one's memory, suddenly surface in one's mind and, like old photos, start a long, often painful mental labour. ULYSSES Joyce’s masterpiece, written in 7 years, is one of the most extraordinary literary works of the 20th century. It is the account of one day in the life of three people in the Dublin of 1904.Leopold Bloom, the main character of the novel is a Jewish salesman who sells advertising spaces and is married to Marion (Molly) who is unfaithful to him. They have recently lost a son and for this reason as well as for being a Jew, Bloom feels an exile in the town. The other character is Stephen Dedalus, a poor proud artist and intellectual in search of a father. At the end of the day that they
