James Joyce: The Irish Modernist Novelist and His Works, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce: The Irish Modernist Novelist and His Works e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce James Joyce is the innovator of prose texts, one of the most important novelists of the 20th century and one of the greatest representatives of Modernism. He was born in Dublin in 1882 into a middle-class Catholic family but during his childhood his father lost his job (tax collector) and so his whole family became poor. In 1898 Loyce studied Italian, French and English at University College Dublin and wrote reviews and literary articles. In 1904 he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle. He then moved to Trieste, where he was offered a teaching post at the Berlitz Institute: here he worked on Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories written in a naturalistic style, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a kind of semi- autobiographical Bildunsgroman. (The book's protagonist is Stephen Dedalus, who is James Joyce's alter-ego. He is a rebellious young artist who leaves Ireland in a kind of self-imposed exile to find freedom). Here Joyce met Italo Svevo, they became friends and he greatly influenced Joyce's style and themes. In 1914, when the First World War broke out, Joyce moved to Zurich, where he began work on Ulysses (1922). In Zurich he also met the poet Ezra Pound. Joyce's Ulysses follows a similar structure to Homer's Odyssey: it consists of 18 chapters, which are inspired by the contents of the Greek epic poem (thus making the epic narrative seem contemporary). The narrative follows the actions of a single character, Leopold Bloom (the modern Ulysses), who wanders around the city of Dublin in a single day (16 June 1904). Joyce uses the stream-of-consciousness method to get to know Bloom's thoughts and communicate them to the reader. The language is rough, the themes are expressed frankly and the use of stream of consciousness is obsessive. In 1920 Joyce moved to Paris, where he worked on Finnegans Wake (his last novel). The Germans occupied France in 1940, Joyce and his family returned to Zurich, where he died a year later. JOYCE AND IRELAND: A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP Joyce's literary works mirror his relationship with Ireland, his motherland: the paradox is that he left Dublin in 1904, but all his works share a kind of obsession with Ireland, his relationship was love and hate. His self-imposed exile gave him the opportunity to describe Ireland and its capital city objectively. According to him, Ireland was both a country dominated by stagnation and stasis, but it was also his main source of inspiration. In fact, he describes places and characters with much realism and enthusiasm. BILDUNGSROMAN It means "training novel' and refers to a novel that portrays the process of growth of a character. It usually focuses on a single character and describes his or her journey to maturity. Dubliners THE STRUCTURE OF THE COLLECTION Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories written in 1900 and published in 1914. There is an ideal description of the Irish capital and all the stories revolve around the lives of 15 inhabitants of the city of Dublin. We can divide the stories into three groups and each of them deals with a different topic. The first three stories deal with childhood and are characterised by a sense of disillusionment and failure. The last story deals with adulthood. An important character here is Eveline, who deals with themes like the impossibility of man to escape suffering, the passivity of the Irish and the paralysis of their will. The last group of stories portrays the relationship between Irish individuals and collective institutions, such as politics, the musical world and the Church, which is described as sterile. Connected to these tales is the concept of paralysis and its ramifications in private and public life. The last story is The Dead, which is about the Irish middle class: according to Joyce it is mediocre and stubborn. The protagonist of the story, Gabriel Conroy, is the prototype of the middle-class Irishman, an individual who lives his life as if he were dead. THE CITY OF DUBLIN Dublin is portrayed as a static, provincial, non-cosmopolitan city. The inhabitants, on the other hand, are depicted as prisoners, prisoners of a city that does not give them the chance to grow and be the best version of themselves. PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS The two elements that unite the characters in Dubliners is Dublin and the common nature of failure. They want to fulfil their lives, overcome all the obstacles but then, in the end, they give up because they do not have enough willpower to turn their desire into something concrete. This universal condition is called 'paralysis', which is not only a physical condition but also a mental one: there is a lack of growth that is common to the whole Irish nation. He takes Dublin as an example, which becomes the prototype of the paralysed city of modernity. ZOOM IN The Bloomsbury Group was a small informal group of intellectuals, writers, philosophers and artists who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of London from about 1907 to 1930. Its members met for dinners, discussions and conversations to encourage aesthetic creativity and the search for new ideas in their various fields. The group had 12 members at any one time, including Virginia Woolf (founding member), her husband Leonard Woolf. AN EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL The story focuses on a single character (Clarissa) on a single day (a Wednesday in June) in a single place (London). What she does is a revolution in the tradition of Victorian literature. She focuses not on the variety of the plot, but on the workings of the mind, and also on the feelings the world arouses in it and the ways in which it is affected by external reality. In this work there is a more experimental approach to writing and for this reason it differs from traditional Victorian novels (where all actions are logically and rationally connected). Instead, in Mrs Dalloway the actions are fragmented and disconnected: and it is the coherence of the mind, which unites the story and receives an enormous amount of impressions, inputs and stimuli at the same time. The novel's narrative technique is also experimental. Woolf in this work uses the stream-of-consciousness technique in a very unusual and poetic way, but unlike Joyce (in Ulysses) she describes her characters' thoughts in an orphaned and coherent way unlike Joyce who does not filter her characters' thoughts and describes them in an uncontrolled and rather incoherent way. So she uses a third-person, impersonal and omniscient narrator; the whole work is elegant, structured on logic, the syntax is stable. Thanks to the stream-of-consciousness technique, she can go beyond the limits of time, traditional plot and describe the effects of the modern world on the lives of individuals. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE TIME Virginia Woolf treats time in an unconventional way. Indeed, in her novel, time plays a very important role. But she contrasts subjective and objective time: subjective time refers to the time of the mind that can go back and forth in time; on the other hand, objective time corresponds to the actual duration of chronological time. The obsession with time is an important characteristic of Mrs Dalloway, and it is also evident from the numerous references to clocks chiming and the passing of time. Time is symbolically represented by Big Ben, whose constant chiming is heard by all the characters and represents a unifying element among them. To The Lighthouse PLOT We can divide the novel into three parts: the first is 'The Windows', the second is 'Time Passes' and finally 'The Lighthouse'. The first part is set during the First World War. Mr and Mrs Ramsay are spending the summer holidays with their eight children in a house on a remote island in the Hebrides. James, the youngest son, wants to go to the lighthouse (which he can only see from his window) but his father tells him he cannot because the weather is likely to be bad. The second part concentrates ten years into a few pages: during these years, the Ramsay house is abandoned and Mrs Ramsay dies. The third part covers ten years from the beginning of the novel: the family returns to the house on the island and Mr Ramsay decides it is time for his children to see the lighthouse up close. MRS RAMSAY AS THE CENTRE OF THE NOVEL To the Lighthouse focuses on a single character: Mrs Ramsay. She is a loving wife, a doting mother but she also has many interests and desires. She is the centre of her family and seems to be the prototype of a traditional woman. Her husband is also a traditional Victorian man and she shares eight children with him. She is also the inspiration for the painter Lily Briscoe, who makes a portrait of Mrs Ramsay and completes it at the end of the third part of the novel. Despite her death (beginning of part two) she is a constant presence, both for the children and for the painter (Lily Briscoe) who, in order to finish the portrait, seeks a vision. So in some ways Mrs Ramsay is the beacon of her family as she is a source of light and inspiration. Everything revolves around her. She is not the only character, there are her sons and daughters (especially James, the beloved and sensitive son), her husband and Lily Briscoe, a painter and the prototype of the modern, independent woman. A MODERNIST NOVEL The plot of To the Lighthouse is very basic and does not have a well-structured plot, which was typical of Victorian literature. We can therefore define "To the Lighthouse" as a modernist novel and therefore has narrative experimentation and psychological insight. We have an external narrator who uses the technique of indirect internal monologue to make the characters' thoughts visible and understandable. This focuses attention on the inner reality of the characters and not on external events and facts. Time is represented in a very original and 'modernist' way. The first part of the novel, for example, takes place in one day, whereas the second part covers a period of several years. This depends on the difference between subjective and objective time. Subjective time is the time of the mind, where we therefore also have the use of the technique of 'stream of consciousness'. Objective time, on the other hand, is chronological time. CONTRASTS AND SYMBOLS The novel revolves around certain contrasts, which are fundamental to understanding Woolf's fiction. Thus we have the contrast between: male and female characters; between life and death; between light and darkness; between the inner and outer worlds. All the characters are affected. There are also many symbols in the novel and they are meant to create unity in the novel. The most important symbol is the lighthouse which has many different meanings: it is the object of James! desire, it is an illuminating presence, it is a symbol of inspiration and light but also a source of desires and hopes; but above all it is the key to understanding the lives of the characters in the novel. We understand this already from the title, where the preposition 'to' suggests the idea of reaching the lighthouse and understanding its meaning. It is important because it is desired by both the characters in the novel and the reader. George Orwell ‘1984' refers to the future and is the opposite of '1948', the year Orwell wrote the book. It is a novel that is both fascinating and disturbing because it describes the role of power and domination in an imaginary future society that focuses on the totalitarian regimes Orwell experienced in the 1930s and 1940s. He focuses on the: - difficulty of preserving the individuality of the person - the value of truth and personal intellectual freedom in a society: a. where language was manipulated to impede clear thinking b. where censorship controlled all forms of public expression c. where all simple human values were sacrificed in favour of social and political orthodoxy. Orwell therefore wanted to warn the Europe of his time about a likely future. THE CHARACTER OF WINSTON SMITH Winston Smith is the protagonist of this novel and his name is symbolic: ® 'Winston' is a direct reference to Winston Churchill. ® Instead Smith is the most common English surname. Therefore, it symbolises the common man who represents all the universal qualities of the people. Winston is one of the survivors of the totalitarian regime in which he lives, whose humanity is still there. He hates the Party and remembers past times. Despite his efforts, he eventually gives up. He is tortured in Room 101 and forced to betray his lover, thus becoming a passive and depersonalised member of the Party. BIG BROTHER Big Brother is an image present everywhere in the state of Oceania. The slogan spread is 'Big Brother is watching you' which is coupled with a picture of a strong and apparently good-looking face watching all the citizens from posters and TV screens. Survival requires (richiede) a love of 'Big Brother' and a reckless orthodoxy of thought and behaviour. It is therefore a threatening (minacciando), all-knowing and all-seeing concept. The instruments of power: NEWWSPEAK AND DOUBLETHINK Newspeak is the name of the reformed version of the English language (Oldspeak) that is introduced in the 1984 society. There are some new features: - There are no more irregular forms - There is a drastic reduction in vocabulary - The aim is to reduce words to reduce the possibility of independent or unorthodox thinking - The words removed are for example "democracy" or "freedom". Thanks to these innovations, by the year 2050 Oldspeak will have completely disappeared and the revolution will be complete. Newspeak is a clear example in the world where language can become an instrument of propaganda and power. Another very important tool is 'double thinking', so the ability to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time, even when they are contradictory. Thanks to double thinking, the party can erase the past and make people believe a different truth. Thus, ‘double thinking' represents the annihilation of human consciousness and rationality.