Scarica La vita e le opere di James Joyce e Virginia Woolf e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE LIFE James Joyce is one of the most important writers of all time and one of the greatest innovators of the 20th century prose writing. He was born in 1882 in Dublin. He studied Italian, French and English at University College in Dublin and also started to write some reviews and articles. Before 1904 he takes care of his mother, and because of many debts he started to work as a tenor for ceremonies or party where he earned a lot of money. On 16 June 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, his future wife. He had a problem with alcohol, for that he caused a fight near a bar, and he was sent to Trieste in order to detoxify himself, where he was also offered a teaching position. He worked on two works: DUBLINERS (1914), and A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1916). In Trieste he became friend of Italo Svevo, an Italian writer, who influenced Joyce’s style and themes. In 1914, when the 1st World War broke out, Joyce moved to Zurich when he began working on the writing of his masterpiece: ULYSSES. In 1920 he moved to Paris and after the German’s invasion, he went back to Zurich where he died in 1941. WORKS DUBLINERS Is a collection of 16 short stories published in 1914, and as the suggests, the story focuses on the lives of 15 stereotypical habitants of the 20th century who lives in Dublin. These stories can be divided in three groups: CHILDHOOD and a strong sense of failure ADULTHOOD and THE UNAVOIDABLE SUFFERING OF MEN THE PRIVATE and THE PUBLIC LIFE There is also an epilogue “THE DEAD”, in which the protagonist Gabriel Conroy, a mediocre middle-class-man lives his life as a DEAD AND PARALYTIC MAN. The author, suggests, then to leave Ireland to avoid this condition and the only way is through EPIPHANY. The word EPIPHANY means REVELATION, which refers to the moment when a Dubliner experience a sudden revelation of his paralysis. (Unfortunately they don’t change their lives, they just become more aware). He refuses the 3rd person omniscient narrator, instead each story is narrated from the point of view of one of the character. He also uses the FREE DIRECT SPEECH and FREE DIRECT THOUGHTS. ULYSSES Tells the story of a day in the life (16th June 1904) of advertising salesman Leopold Bloom; during this day the 3 main characters wake up, have serious encounters in Dublin and go to sleep eighteen hours later. (characters: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly -> Bloom’s wife). The novel is divided into 3 parts, corresponding each to each character: 1st part: STEPHEN DEDALUS -> young man, with intellectual ambitions and passionate about ART 2nd part: LEOPOLD BLOOM -> the Ulysses of the title, a middle-aged-named man who wander around Dublin, as Ulysses wandered around the Mediterranean. 3rd part: MOLLY BLOOM -> Leopold’s wife, who correspond to Ulysses’ wife Penelope, but not as faithful as she was. Dedalus represents Ulysses’ s son TELEMACHUS, because he’s adopted as a son by Bloom who offers him a shelter, home, where Molly waits for them. BILDUNGSROMAN The German word Bildungsroman means ‘novel of formation’ and refers to a novel which portrays the process of the growing up of a character. It usually focuses on one single character and describes his/her journey towards maturity. VIRGINIA WOOLF LIFE She was born in London 1882; she didn’t go to university, but she received a fine home education. She published many books and novels, the most important: MRS DALLOWAY (1925) and THE LIGHTHOUSE (1927). When her mother died, at the age of 49, Virginia was 13, she had a serious mental breakdown, and instability which affect her entire life. After her father’s death, she moved to Bloomsbury, where she met her husband, Leonard Woolf, and together founded the Bloomsbury Group, which aim was to give support to young artists. She died in 1941 drowning herself in a river WORKS MRS DALLOWAY The story takes place on one single day (Wednesday, June 1923) in one single place: London. A middle aged woman, Clarissa Dalloway who was buying flowers for a party in the evening. The other character is Septimus Smith (a still traumatised veteran of the war, that commit suicide at the end of the novel). Clarissa became aware of this at the party, she’s shocked, but then she understands that death is part of life and decides to live on. CLARISSA: is not an open-mind woman as suggested by the title “Mrs”: she’s married, she’s a mother, but she consider these conditions as a limitation to her freedom. Her mind is constantly pervaded by her past memories, followed by the readers thanks to the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE: Clarissa’s self is split between the desire to celebrate life (she loves social life) and a morbid attraction towards death. SEPTIMUS: veteran from the war, shocked by this experience he suffers of panic attack and terrible visions. He too is attracted by death, and consider death as a way of liberation from the weight of life. AN EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL: V. Woolf deliberately decided to focus on one single day because her interest, as a modernist writer, is not the variety of the plot but the workings of the mind, and the way it’s affected by external reality. Unlike Joyce, who represented his character’s thoughts as uncontrolled and incoherent,
