Scarica James Joyce: The Irish Rebel and His Literary Works e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE 1882 - 1941 'Poetry, even when apparently most fantas�c, is always a revolt against ar�fice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.' LIFE - A rebel among rebels - Contrast with Yeats and the other literary contemporaries who tried to rediscover the Irish Cel�c iden�ty - He had two children, Giorgio and Lucia, with his long.�me partner, Nora Barnacle, whom he eventually married - He le� Dublin at the age of twenty-two and he se�led for some �me in Paris, the in Rome and later in Trieste, where he made friends with Italo Svevo and finally in Zurich THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF JOYCE'S WORKS - The se�ng of most of his works -> Ireland, especially Dublin - He rebelled against the Catholic Church - All the facts in his narra�ves -> explored from different points of view simultaneously Isola�on and detachment of the ar�st from society: 1. Greater importance given to the inner world of the characters 2. Time -> perceived as subjec�ve 3. His task -> to render life objec�vely THE EVOLUTION OF JOYCE'S STYLE Dubliners (1914) - Realism - Disciplined prose - Different points of view - Free-direct speech A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (1916) - Third-person narra�on - Minimal dialogue - Language and prose used to portray the protagonist's state of mind - Free-direct speech ULYSSES (1922) - Interior monologue with two levels of narra�on - Extreme interior monologue DUBLIN - The Dublin represented by Joyce is not fixed and sta�c, it is 'the revolu�onaty montage of 'Dublins' through a range of historical juxtaposi�ons and varied styles' - The 15 stories of the Dubliners, though set in the same city, are not united by their geography: EACH STORY HAS A SINGULAR LOCATION - The evoca�on of his town is A Portrait is deeply influenced by Joyce's prolonged temporak and spa�al distance; Dublin is filtered through Stephen's mind - in Ulysses, Dublin overwhelms the reader DUBLINERS - Published in 1914 in the newspaper The Irish Homestead by Joyce with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus - Dubliners are described as afflicted people - All the stories are set in Dublin -> 'The city seemed to me the centre of paralysis' DUBLINERS -> STRUCTURE AND STYLE PARALYSIS/ESCAPE: 1. CHILDHOOD - The sisters - An Encounter - Araby 2. ADOLESCENCE - A�er the Race - The Boarding House - Eveline - Two Gallants 3. MATURE LIFE - A Li�le Cloud - Clay - Counterparts - A Painful Case 4. PUBLIC LIFE - Ivy Day in the Commi�ee Room - A mother - Grace - The Dead DUBLINERS -> NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND THEMES - Naturalis�c, concise, detailed descrip�ons - Naturalism combined with symbolism -> double meaning of details - Each story opens in MEDIAS RES and is mostly told from the perspec�ve of a character - Use of free direct speech and free direct thought -> direct presenta�on of the character's thoughts - Different linguis�c registers -> the language suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters - Use of epiphany -> 'the sudden spiritual manifesta�on' of an interior reality - Themes -> paralysis and escape - Absence of a didac�c and moral aim because of the impersonality of the ar�st DUBLINERS -> EPIPHANY Joyce's aim -> to take the reader beyond the usual aspects of life through EPIPHANY: - it is the special moment in which a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situa�on or an episode lead the character to a sudden self-realisa�on about himself/herself or about the reality surrounding him/her - Understanding the epiphany in each story is the key to the story itself DUBLINERS -> EVELINE - Eveline -> passive, influenced by her family's mentality - Her father -> a violent and strict man (HER FEAR) - Her mother -> conserva�ve (HER DUTY) - Frank -> Eveline's faicè, a very kind, open-hearted and brave boy (HER UNKNOWN FUTURE) -> An�thesis between Eveline's house and her new one in Buenos Aires (PARALYSIS/ESCAPE) - The story opens in medias res -> 'She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue' - Third-person narrator but Eveline's point of view - Subjec�ve percep�on of �me - Epiphany -> a street organ which reminds Eveline of the promise she made to her dying mother - Symbolic words -> DUST (decay, paralysis) and SEA (ac�on, escape) Themes: - struggle between one's happiness and one's responsibility - dream VS reality - ac�on and inac�vity - paralysis and the failure to find a way out of it DUBLINERS -> THE DEAD The protagonists: Gabriel Conroy, an embodiment of Joyce himself, and Gre�a, his wife. Gabriel's marriage is clearly suffering from paralysis. Epiphany -> the song 'The Lass of Aughrim', reminds Gre�a of a young man, Micheal Furey, who died for her when he was seventeen years old (Gabriel understands he is deader than Michael Furey in Gre�a's mind) The imagery:
