James Joyce and the Modern age, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce and the Modern age e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! From the Edwardian Age to the First World War EDWARDIAN ENGLAND (1901-10) When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son Edward became king as Edward VII He was a good guide for Britain, because he kept good relationships with other European countries. At that time the British Empire had the power on a fifth of the total land of the globe, British towns were the wealthiest in Europe (great exhibition) and British ships was still strong in trade and colonization. However, British power was in competition with France and Germany because they wanted the hegemony of the sea too, and America, especially in the new industries. In this context King Edward signed an agreement with France in 1904, the  Entente Cordiale, which established that Britain could continue to follow its interests in Egypt, and France in Morocco. They wanted to recombine the importance of England as a colonial power, and they started to make link between the nation. As a consequence, Britain could count on France and Russia in any conflict against Germany, Austria or Italy (opposition). We are laying the basis for thew First WW. Edwardian England was still similar to Victorian England: class distinctions and poverty were still present in the society. At the end of this period the society changed and most of all after the First World War. THE SEEDS OF YHE WELFARE STATE In that period the cost of life was very high and the salary of workers very low, so people rebelled against the government. There are also a lot of strikes, protests. The government decides to introduce some laws for the Welfare. The welfare are some intervention from the government in order to protect people’s rights, health and money. The liberal government enacted some laws. A new Labour Representation Committee developed into the Labour Party in 1906. The general election in the same year was won by the Liberals (former Whigs), who were divided into two groups: those who supported the traditional liberal values of laissez- faire and self-help, (help yourself to build your own economic success without the help of the government) and those who supported New Liberalism, which was in favour of the intervention of the government in social life. Among the New Liberals was David Lloyd George, a Chancellor of the Exchequer who led country’s finances at the time (minister of economy). The Welfare State developed a series of measures:  the introduction of a pension of one to people over 70  free meals and regular medical inspections in schools.  1909 minimum wages were fixed.  in 1911 workers were given benefits such as free medical treatment and sickness benefits. In 1910 the king died and was succeeded by his son who became George V. The Parliament Act (1911), removed the House of Lords’ right to veto money bills passed in the Commons (house of common: liberals, house of lords: conservatives) Since the parliament refused the Welfare system of Llyod, he asked more taxes for rich people to finance the welfare state, and they refused the law for two years, but it passed anyway with the intervention of liberals. They decided with parliament act 1911 that every five years there will be a new election (This system still operates). In the same year workers led to a period of social unrest with protests and strikes because of their low salary and conditions of work. The government also used army to stop their strikes. As a result, Lloyd George responded with unemployment benefits for the workers (disoccupazione). THE SUFFRAGETTES In 1903 Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The ‘Suffragettes’ wanted women to have the right of vote and they became very popular in the public. They held many protests in London, chained themselves to Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, broke windows, etc. Some militants were imprisoned and went on hunger strike. Women over 30 would gain the vote in 1918, while in 1928 to women over 21. THE EASTER RISING IN IRELAND The ‘Irish Question’ refers to the tragic events regarding the fight for Irish independence. In April 1916 there was a rebellion in Dublin, the Easter Rising, because Home Rule voted by the Commons in 1914, had been suspended until the end of the war. The leaders of the insurrection received support from Germany and seized (sequestrarono) the General Post Office and other buildings in the centre of the city. The rebellion was repressed and 15 of the leaders executed. The Irish Republican party Sinn Féin (an Irish name meaning ‘ourselves alone’), which was fighting for the reunification of Ireland, became popular convincing people with fear that military conscription might extend to Ireland. THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR In 1914 a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo. This event had a series of reactions:  Austria began bombing Belgrade, Serbia’s capital;  the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, declared war on Russia and then on France;  Germany invaded Belgium in order to attack France from an unexpected front.  Britain, which had participated in the creation of Belgium in 1831 and natural, now faced the threat of a commercial blockade because of the presence of the German navy in the North Sea and the Channel. So when Germany violated Belgian neutrality, Britain declared war and a force of 130,000 soldiers (every young men over 18) crossed the Channel to fight on the Western Front in northern France. BRITAIN AT WAR By September1914 the German army reached the River Marne in France, where a great battle stopped the German advance while many people died. Britain had the support of volunteers until 1916, when conscription was introduced, while The Empire sent troops. Women replaced men in their civilian jobs with competence, which contributed to obtain the right of vote with women’s suffrage. A WAR OF ATTRITION In May 1915 a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania and more than a thousand people died, including 128 Americans. The US President Wilson sent protests to Germany. In the same month Italy joined France and Britain. The bloodiest battle in British history took place on the Somme, in northern France, in July 1916. This episode was considered a war of attrition, where battles were fought not for strategic motives, but only to kill soldiers enemies. Soldiers retreated into trenches behind barbed wire; machine guns, poison gas, tanks and aircraft were used. Life in the trenches was very stressful because of mud, lack of hygiene, fear of gas. The Germans also relied on submarines, called U-boats, to fight the war at sea. The effect of shell explosions was called ‘Shell shock’ because it caused cases of psychological disorders among soldiers. The horror of trench life was recalled by the War Poets. In  In July 1917 George V changed the name of the royal family from the German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha into the British Windsor;  Bolsheviks obtained power in Russia.  Italian army collapsed at the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917.  Austrians had mass surrenders and desertions.  Germany was starving.  The United States joined the war in April 1917 on Britain’s side. THE END OF THE WAR In September 1918 British artillery began dropping shells on the Hindenburg Line, a series of German trenches, while tanks and infantry attacked on the ground. By October the Germans were retreating (ritirano) along the Western Front.  Warfare cost the Allies and the Germans about 260,000 victims. On 4th October 1918 Germany asked President Woodrow Wilson for an armistice which would guarantee the German withdrawal (ritiro) from the occupied territory and allow national self-determination, but included no punishment for the country.  Britain and France agreed for fear that American power might increase if war continued.  On 11th November the guns fell silent and the day has been commemorated as Armistice Day. It was also called ‘Remembrance Day’ or ‘Poppy Day’ because the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the battlefields. The peace treaty was signed at Versailles in 1919 by the Allied powers. President Woodrow Wilson proposed ‘Fourteen Points’ a sort of peace treaty to prevent future wars. He presented a plan to set up the League of Nations. This was to be an international organization, settled in Geneva, Switzerland, and was to resolve international disputes. However, it proved very difficult to create, and Wilson left office without managing to convince the USA to join. The League of Nations was laid the foundations of the United Nations. The age of anxiety THE CRISIS OF CERTAINTIES The First world war caused the disillusionment of Britain, they were in conflict between the glorious past and the doubts about the future cause they didn’t have any hope, some soldiers returned home searching for pleasure others were tortured by guilt because of the horror they witnessed or missed the sense of purpose the war years had given them. Stability and prosperity belonged only to the privileged class. The gap between the old and young generation grew wider because the older one was considered responsible for the waste of lives during the war, young people accused old people for the atrocity of the war, they were the cause for the bad future. The dissolution of the Empire into the Commonwealth of nation; the former colonies of Great Britain made an economic and political agreement in order to maintain the social order. It caused the grow of the feelings of frustration and rootlessness and the transformations of the notions of imperial hegemony and white superiority. Writers like Auden and Orwell warned their readers against totalitarianism and writers like Forster became averse to political subjection. People have lost every certainty because scientists and philosophers destroyed the old universe which have sustained the Victorian world and view which was replaced by new views of man and the universe. FREUD’S INFLUENCE New ideas were introduced by Sigmund Freud, born in 1856 to a Jewish family in what is now the Czech Republic, he attended the University of Vienna to study medicine. During his medical research, he became interested in the complex operations of the mind. In his essay “The interpretations of dreams”, the argument of this essay can be summarised as follows:  Dreams are the fulfilment of a wish.  Dreams are the disguised fulfilment of a wish.  Dreams are the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. the war, and they didn’t see hope for the future, even though there were new theories of psychology, philosophy and politic with new kinds of expression. Since the past was considered horrible, artists and modernists abandoned the past and experimented new types of investigation, such as urbanization, technology, war, speed (futurism – Marinetti, Italy, Vorticism - England), and mass communication. Modernism created a new modern consciousness and new forms of expression. MAIN FEATURES OF MODERNISM MODERN NOVEL: In the Victorian novel we have chronological events, regular verses, the presence of an objective narrator who is a sort of guide (…) now all these things are reversed, in the Modern novel we have not chronological order, unity in space and time, and there is not a single narrator but multiple point of view according to the different characters involved in the story. All artistic forms of Modernism have in common: • the intentional distortion of shapes, like the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso Georges Braque. • the rejection of limitations in space and time and the rejection of the linear narrative or conventional verse. • the emphasis on subjectivity, on how perception works rather than on what is perceived; in literature, there isn’t any longer an objective omniscient third-person narrator, but the stream of consciousness. • the use of allusive language and the development of the multiple association of words. • the intensity of the isolated ‘moment’ or ‘image’ to provide a true insight into the nature of things. • the importance of unconscious as well as conscious life. • the need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form. TOWARDS A COSMOPOLITAN LITERATURE Novelists and poets were inspired by classical, in order to reshape them in a new personal and original way, and new cultures to create a new subjective mythology. • Thomas Eliot exploited a wide range of influences in his poem The Waste Land: from Buddhist sources to the Metaphysical poets or even Dante. • James Joyce uses the stream-of-consciousness technique, influenced by Sigmund Freud, William James and Henri Bergson, but derives from the process of dissolution of the novel. English modern literature was becoming cosmopolitan, because of the influences of the past and contemporary literature from abroad. In the Victorian novel the protagonists came from middle class, now it’s not important the social class but their inner psychology. The modern novel THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL During the 18th and 19th, the novel was connected to the society and talked mainly about the middle class with the gain or loss of social status as one of the main themes an example is hard times where the gain of a social status is lived by sissy Jupiter the only positive character while the one who lost it is Tom because he became a criminal. The novelist was a mediator between the characters and the reader, in the novel he represents the society and his problems criticising the institutions, representing significant events in chronological order. The existence of accepted values and standards of behaviour led to the presentation of a social pattern that was a constant to both the reader and writer. The structure of the novel remained unchanged until the second decade of the 20th century. THE NEW ROLE OF THE NOVELIST The shift from the Victorian novel to the modern novel was caused by a gradual transformation of the British society which in a few years passed from the comfortable, prosperous world of the Victorians and Edwardians to the inter-war years, which were marked by unrest and ferment. the shift from the traditional novel to the modern novel is caused by all the changes and discoveries in this period an example are the theories of the psychologist Freud, Jung , the philosophers Bergson and James ( in his book he mentioned for the first time the stream of consciousness , the flow of the thoughts in the mind of human beings) also the theory of relativity of Einstein, but also the consequences of the war caused this shift because people were disillusioned especially young people, also in terms of the economy and politics: the shift to the commonwealth of nation. The urgency for social change and, from a literary point of view, the need for different forms of expression, forced novelists into a position of moral and psychological uncertainty so they experimented new methods like the interior monologue. The novelist had a new role, which consisted in mediating between the solid and unquestioned values of the past and the confused present, highlighting the complexity of the unconscious. it refers to the gap between the young generation and the old generation so the reader is a sort of link between the past that is safe and is about important and glorious events that shaped the identity of the country while the present is confused caused by the atrocity of the war and also the changes in the economy, the past is in contrast with the present. the past of the country that was based on conventions values not corrupted by the atrocity of the war and the present that is confused and without hope for the future. This new realism influenced by French and Russian writers - Marcel Proust, the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (1913- 27); Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy tended to shift from society to the individual, regarded as a limited creature whose moral progress was inferior to the advances in technology. they talk about the reality through the psychology of the characters now they didn’t have any didactic aim they didn’t want to criticize the society they just focused their idea on the men and on the intimate relationship between women and men, with parents. Two other factors contributed to the development of the modern novel: the new concept of time and the new theory of the unconscious which derived from the Freudian influence. EXPERIMENTING WITH NEW NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES The modern novelist rejected omniscient narration because it could no longer adequately represent the reality of a world that had dramatic social, political and technological agitations. The novelist understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using traditional technique so they experimented new methods to portray the individual consciousness; the viewpoint shifted from the external world to the internal world of a character's mind. The analysis of a character's consciousness was influenced by the theories about the simultaneous existence of different levels of consciousness and subconsciousness. According to these theories, past experience is retained and the coexistence of the past in the present determines the whole personality of each human being. Other characteristics are: the different points of view and the different language register each character is going to give his point of view in the novel and the language is adapted to who is talking if it is a child he’ll talk like a child and so on different register for different character the novelist concentrated on the intimate relationships. A DIFFERENT USE OF TIME The treatment of time was also different, the time in the Victorian novel is chronological we follow the maturity of the characters, all the events are organised in a chronological order while in the modern novel Time was subjective and internal: if the distinction between past and present was almost meaningless in psychological terms, then there was no point in building a well-structured plot, with chronological sequence of events. It was not necessarily the passing of time that revealed the truth about characters. The story might unfold in the course of a single day, as in Joyce's Ulysses and in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway by observing the characters performing a common action, or by what Joyce called an 'epiphany - the sudden revelation of an interior reality caused by trivial events of everyday life. Something like an object or a sound that reminds the character that something changed in his life, watching the object or listening to the sound or because of another banal event he realised that his life is a failure. THE STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE The narrative technique that modern novelists mainly employed was the so-called stream of consciousness William lames coined the phrase stream of consciousness to define the continuous flow of thoughts and sensation that characterise the human mind. This definition was applied by literary critics to the kind of 20th-century. Action which focused on this inner process. The interior monologue is the verbal expression of this psychic phenomenon. THREE GROUPS OF NOVELISTS There are at least three distinct groups of novelists among the innovators of the first decades of the 20" century.  The first group consists of the psychological novelists, who focused on the development of the character's mind and on human relationships. The most important are: o Joseph Conrad whose novels record the mystery of human experience; o D.H. Lawrence who described the inner conflicts of working-class people and the liberating function of sexuality; o E.M. Forster whose frequent theme is the complexity of human relationships, together with the analysis of the contrast between two different cultures.  The second group includes the novelists who experimented with subjective narrative techniques, exploring the mind of one or more characters and giving voice to their thoughts. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf belong to this group.  The third group focused on the social and political problems of the 1930s The writer’s attention focused on the society around them. Many British intellectuals shared Marx’s ideas and tended to become didactic and take a political stance. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley were authors of anti-utopian / dystopian novels: the former attacked totalitarianism and the latter the ideals of scientific progress. The interior monologue SUBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS Introspection was already present in the 18th century novels (Defoe and Richardson) and in the 19th century where in the characters were portrayed as social beings with a moral and emotional inner life. At the beginning of the 20 th century, writers focused on subjective consciousness, and they understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using traditional techniques; so, they adopted the interior monologue, the verbal expression of physic phenomenon, the stream of consciousness, to express the activity of mind. MAIN FEATURES OF THE INTERIOR MONOLOGUE • stream of consciousness, the verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon. • no chronological order, because the stream of thoughts doesn’t follow an order. • The narrator may be present. • no logical order in the events (ex. First the adjective and then the subject). • The setting is character’s mind. • Speech is immediate, without introductory expressions (no comma, no full stop), we know the events that are happening in the story thanks to the use of flashbacks, and not for the explanation of the narrator. We don’t know the addresser of the speech, the narrator understands trough the context. • The interior monologue bring the mind of the character to be free among associations of ideas. TYPES OF INTERIOR MONOLOGUE There are two basic kinds of interior monologue, indirect and direct. • In the indirect interior monologue, character’s thoughts are controlled by the narrator and maintains logical and grammatical organisation (capital letters, comma, full stop). The character’s thoughts are presented with descriptions or comments to guide the reader; the character stays fixed in space while his consciousness moves freely in time, and everything happens in the present. This concept of ‘inner time’, in contrast with the conventional conception of time, is preferred to ‘external time’, because it shows the relativism of a subjective experience. (ex. In Ulysses). According to Joyce the narrator seems not to exist, and the character’s inner self is presented directly. He used two different kinds of direct interior monologue: o one external to the character’s mind, description on what’s happening around him and o the other internal, emotions and feelings • The direct interior monologue, the narrator doesn’t control the flow of the thoughts, they are free and not interrupted by external events. The narration is characterized by a mix of third-person narration, an external time, and an interior narration linked to the concept of ‘inner time’ (the time of the character’s mind) (ex. used by Joyce, where the narration takes place inside the mind of the main character, while he is dreaming). We have also symbols, for example a banal object could have a deep meaning (dark, light, the sound of the organ). Words and ideas are free and created new expressions, influenced by human experience. James Joyce LIFE -1882-1904 James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, he was the eldest surviving child of ten children, four boys and six girls. He was educated at Jesuit schools they were really severe, after that at the University College, Dublin, he took a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on Modern Language in 1902.He was not attracted to Political and literary movements which had as their objective the freeing of Ireland from English dominance, because he was more interested in a wider European Culture and he started to think of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. So, he was in contrast with his literary contemporary W.B. Yeats who was trying to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity by referring back to the past in order to create a national conscience. Joyce, on the contrary, believed that the only way to increase Irelands awareness was by offering a realistic portrait of its life from a European cosmopolitan Viewpoint. That’s why he was considered a rebel among rebels he didn’t exalt the nationality of Ireland he was against the oppression in terms of politics, family, and the moral values of the society, he was against the society in general and his imposition. Then he spent some time in Paris, where he intended to start a writing career but he had to come back to Dublin because of his mother fatal illness in 1903. It was in this period that he started to think about his future career he seriously wanted to become a writer, he published his first short story, The Sisters, in the Evening Telegraph, which would have been used as the opening story in his Dubliners collection. In June 1904 he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a 20-year-old girl who was working as a chambermaid in a hotel. They had their first date on 16 June, which became the Bloomsday of Ulysses. TRIESTE 1905-15 Joyce and wife settled in Trieste, they got married in 1931 and had two children Giorgio e Lucia, there he worked as an English teacher and started a friendship with Italo Svevo. During the years in Trieste he had financial problems in fact he didn’t manage to publish his works because they were considered obscene so the editors refused to publish his works. His first work to appear in book form was a collection of 36 short poems, Chamber Music (1907). Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories all about Dublin and its life, was completed in 1905 but only published on the eve of WWI the book caught the attention of the American poet Ezra Pound, who praised Joyce for his unconventional style and voice, and helped him print A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), his semi-autobiographical novel. In 1914 Joyce also wrote most of his naturalistic drama Exiles. ZURICH: 1915-20 In 1915 Joyce moved to Zurich together with his family, he had no alternative because of his position as a British national in Austrian-occupied Trieste, he belonged to the enemies. Even though he established as a writer thanks to his works Dubliners and a portrait of the artist as a young man, is financial difficulties weren’t relieved. In 1917 he he received anonymous donations that allowed him to publish his works so he could keep on writing the novel Ulysses, which at the beginning appeared in serial form in The Little Review in 1918, but was suspended in 1920 because of his obscene content. PARIS: 1920-40 In 1920 Joyce moved to Paris, where the American-born bookseller Sylvia Beach agreed to publish Ulysses in 1922. A limited edition of 1,000 copies was followed by an English edition of 2,000 copies, also printed in Paris in 1924, but there was no American edition until 1934, and no British edition until 1937. Eveline The story starts in medias res with Eveline sitting at the window, watching the avenue. She thinks of her family, and the neighbours. Years ago, the children on the avenue used to play on a field where now stand many houses. She and her brothers are now grown up, and her mother is dead. Eveline is nineteen years old, and she is planning to leave Ireland forever. She works very hard, at a store and also at home, where she cares for her old father. Her father is quite cruel, he has never beaten her, as he did with her brothers, but he often threatens her with violence. With her brothers gone (Ernest is dead and Harry is often away on business) there is no one to protect her. She takes care of her relatives and gives over her whole salary for the family, but her father is always accusing her of being a spendthrift. She was planning to leave Ireland with her boyfriend a sailor named Frank. He has a home in Buenos Ayres. Frank treats her respectfully and with great tenderness, and he entertains her with stories about his travels around the world. Her father dislikes him. Eveline lacks the courage to escape she is paralyzed. She will never get on the boat to Buenos Ayres. At the end, at the arbour, Frank calls her, trying to get her to board. She stares at him as if he is a stranger and she realizes that she would stay in Dublin losing Frank’s love for ever and imprisoned in a dull life. The story takes place in the evening in Evelin’s living room and the room his characterised by darkness and dust that represents the paralysis. Another symbol for the paralysis is the old, yellowed picture of a priest, a school’s friend of his father. The sound of the street organ can be considered the epiphany of the story since reminds her the promise she made to her dying mother, she promised her she would take care of his father brothers and house. Eveline would like to escape from his family and start a new life with Frank in another country in a new house, but she doesn’t manage to break the chains that links her to her promise and family and is desire to escape becomes a failure. She loses the courage to make a decision and have a happier life, she is paralyzed. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE: The narrator in the story is a third person narrator and it is adopted Eveline’s point of view, the writer adopts the free direct thought. Eveline is not introduced by the writer in a traditional way, we don’t know anything about her physical aspect, or about her school, her family. The readers know something more from her thoughts. She just appears tired and this is another symbol for the paralysis. Eveline – analysis text page 377 The story starts with Eveline sat at the window watching the street, while she perceives the smell of the cretonne of the curtains. Eveline is mentally tired. She remembers the field where she used to play with other children in the past, but one day a man built an house in this field, brown and dump. Eveline also remembers the relationship with her brother Ernest, the older one who never played with her because he was too grown up, and her father, before the death of her mother. Now, when her mother died, everything changed, also her father. In the line 6 in the text says that Eveline is planning to leave her home, but no one knows she’s going to leave (line 30). (Line 17) All the objects in her home are dusted (her job was to clean the dust), and this represents the paralysis, there is no subject or verb since the reader has to concentrate his attention on the house, symbol of Eveline's inner psychology, paralyzed and stuck in her life. In her home there is also a yellowing photograph of a father’s friend, a priest (yellow means old, symbol of paralysis), and next to it a print of Blessed Margaret Mary Alogue. (line 22) There is a reference to religion, the cause of Joyce’s paralysis. From line 26 the story is told in the third person narration from the point of view of Eveline, who, in all her life she had to take care of her home. Eveline also works in a Store, but she’s not happy to work there, in fact in the line 35 it says that she will not cry many tears if she leaves the store. The surname of Eveline is Hill (line 33), she is nineteen, and we don’t know her physical description, but we know her emotions (the fact that she’s not happy at home, and no one respect her). (Line 41) It mentions Harry, another brother, who is not at home anymore to protect her, while Ernest is dead, and it says that when Eveline was young her father was not violent to her. But when she grew up, after her daily work she was forced to give her salary to her father, who spent it to alcol, because according to him Eveline couldn’t manage money, he just left her money to buy some food. From line 50 we know that Eveline also worked as a babysitter. In line 56 it mentions that Evelin lives a sad life (like all people in Dublin, stuck in their reality). In line 57 is introduced Eveline’s boyfriend, Frank, who is different from her father since he takes care about her. They are planning to leave Dublin and go to Buenos Ayres to start a new life. Eveline remembers the first time she saw him, and we don’t have a physical description of Frank, but we know the kind of person he is. Eveline’s father didn’t want Evelin and Frank see each other, so they always met secretly, because he didn’t trust Frank and their relationship since Frank was a sailor, and by travelling a lot he could have all the girls he wanted. Frank tells Eveline many stories about all his travels, and he is also quite rich, in fact he had the possibility to buy a new house. (Line 79) “he would miss her” > Eveline’s thought. Line 80 is characterized by juxtapositions, because things are described and told all together, and through a flashback she describes that when her mother was still alive her father was also funny. In line 85 there is the use of epiphany, because down the street Eveline hears the sound of an organ and she remembers the promise she did to her mother while she was dying because of her illness, to take care of her brother and father. If she doesn’t respect this promise it will appear as a nightmare every night (line 86). Ulysses by Joyce THE PLOT Ulysses tells the story of a day in the life of an advertising salesman (agente pubblicitario) Leopold Bloom. During this day three main characters wake up, have various encounters in Dublin, and go to sleep eighteen hours later. The central character, Leopold Bloom is Joyce’s common man. During his wanderings he meets the indigent writer Stephen Dedalus (he is considered Joyce alter ego). Stephen becomes momentarily Bloom’s adopted son: the alienated common man rescues (salva) the alienated artist and takes him home (e lo porta a casa). At home there is Molly, Bloom’s wife, a voluptuous singer who is planning an afternoon of adultery with her music director. THE RELATION TO ODYSSEY BY HOMER Ulysses is related to Homer’s great epic the Odyssey. Joyce used the Odyssey as a framework for his book, arranging its characters and events around Homer’s heroic model, with:  Leopold Bloom represents Ulysses;  Stephen represents Ulysses ‘son Telemachus;  Molly the faithful Penelope. Ulysses is divided into three parts, imitating the three parts of Odyssey. THE SETTING The set is in Dublin, in the street that Joyce knew, in the house that he knew and in the pub he had frequented. He made the very air of Dublin, the atmosphere, the feeling, the place. Consequently, Dublin becomes itself a character in his novel. THE MYTHICAL METHOD Joyce’s method is a new form of prose based on the “mythical method”. This allowed (ha permesso) the author to make a parallel (di fare un parallelo) with the Odyssey. Joyce wanted to write a “modern epic prose” and he achieved (ha realizzato) a new form of realism. THE REPRESENTATION OF HUMAN NATURE Stephen Dedalus, Ms Bloom and Mrs Bloom represent different aspects of human nature:  Stephen is pure intellect;  Mrs Bloom represents sensual nature and fecundity;  Mr. Bloom is everybody, the whole of mankind (l’intera umanità). JOYCE’S PROSE Joyce combined several methods to present a variety of matters (stream of consciousness technique, the cinematic technique, flashbacks, suspension of speech, etc) creating the so-called “collage technique”, quite similar to the techniques used by the cubist artist who depicted (che raffigura) a scene from all perspectives (tutte le prospettive). Joyce use the interior monologue and there are two levels of narration:  One external to the character’s mind;  The other internal with the character’s thoughts flowing freely (con i pensieri del personaggio che fluiscono liberamente) without any interruption coming from the external world. The language is rich in images, contrasts, paradoxes, symbols etc. He use also the slang, nicknames, foreign words, literary quotations and allusions to other texts. THE CONCEPT OF TIME In Joyce’s novels Time takes the reader back and forth immersing him/her in the narrator's experience. It becomes frozen in some parts while expands in other parts, by detailed descriptions of a moment of its narrator's feelings, thoughts, and experience. Time is both fragmented and dilated. It perfectly fits the inner psychology of the characters always tormented by their lives and personal relationships. They are confused and alienated, paralysed in their life and also the time in the story is altered, sometime blocked some time expanded. The writer concept of time probably reflect the modern spirit of the age, the influence of James and Bergson The Dead A professor named Gabriel Conroy attends with his wife Gretta a Christmastime party thrown by his aunts (Kate and Julia Morkin, grand dames in the world of Dublin music) at which he dances with a fellow teacher and delivers a brief speech. As the party is breaking up, Gabriel witnesses his wife, Gretta, listening to a song sung by the renowned tenor Bartell D'Arcy, and the intensity of the music causes him to feel both sentimental and lustful. He realizes that Michael Furey, a young boy who felt in love with Gretta when they were very young, and who committed suicide for her love, was still alive in Gretta’s mind. Later they come back to their hotel Gabriel was planning to have a beautiful night with her but he felt how distant was she and was devastated to discover that his wife no longer loved him; Gabriel had always been proud of himself he considered himself superior to the others but after the revelation he started doubting her wife if he had ever known her even thought they spent a lot of time together. While she was asleep, he started watching her, his thoughts started wandering from the past to the present to the future, the symbol of his confused thoughts are the untidy clothes on the chair of the hotel room. He was thinking if they ever lived as husband and wife, if she has ever felt passionate about their marriage. He imagined her when she was young and while watching her, he realized that he has never felt that towards a woman, he was truly in love with her. But then a noise caught his attention to the window, it was snowing. He feels alone and profoundly mortal, the falling snow let him think about the death and the life, and about his life that seems to be meaningless now. The snow was falling everywhere also above the grave of Michael Furey, so it was covering both the living and the dead making them similar, in fact one of the main themes is the border between life and death which is short of not upside down. It’s a paradox because Michael who is physically dead is still alive in Gretta’s heart while Gabriel physically alive is dead in Gretta’s heart. Snow is a symbol because it derives from water, so it symbolizes rebirth and purification it’s another paradox referring to the fact that Michel is still alive in Gretta’s heart. But the snow also represents the paralysis if something is frozen, it is motionless paralyzed, but the snow covered Ireland. Not only Gabriel but his entire homeland/country has been paralyzed. The snow on the ground represents the paralysis. Gabriel will lack the courage to escape, and he will remain entrapped in an unhappy marriage and in meaningless life. There’s also a reference to religion, In fact Gabriel is the Archangel Gabriel, angel of death while Michel is the Archangel Gabriel the leader of heaven’s army. ANALYSIS this is the greatest of all the stories in Dubliners — the longest, richest, and most emotionally. The story includes the great themes of Dubliners. Gabriel's marriage is clearly suffering from paralysis, the condition of nearly all the characters in the collection In this story, paralysis is represented as usual by the colors yellow and brown, but Joyce also employs the symbolism of snow and ice; after all, if something is frozen, it is motionless — paralyzed. The symbolism returns in the final paragraphs describing the snow that covered Ireland. Not only Gabriel but his entire homeland/country has been paralyzed. The snow on the ground represents the paralysis.