james Joyce and Ulysses, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica james Joyce and Ulysses e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! LITERARY BACKGROUND. (period of anxiety>characterized by the two great wars) The beginning of the 20th century was marked by one of the most productive, yet shocking literary and aristic revolutions of all time. There were new ideas and new theories that revolutionized the concept of life and of the world> all the canons of the Victorian age failed (for example the importance of the third person omniscient narrator, a strong faith in human progress..). Above all, with the influence of Freud’s psychoanalysis, we became aware of the unconscious and the inner self. The experience of the First World War (1914-1918) was the final blow (colpo finale) to Victorian optimism and inaugurated an era of anxiety and uncertainty. Literature_is used to explore the hidden sides of the “moden” mind. THE BREAK WITH THE 19TH CENTURY AND THE OUTBURST OF MODERNISM,. The literature and the arts of the early 20th century were marked by the birth of ‘Modernism’, influenced by different art movements where people came togheter to rebel against the past and create new things_ The main movements were: ® FUTURISM> movement that rebelled against the past and decomposed the subject to create a sense of dynamism in painting; ® CUBISM> movement that fragmented the subject into geometrical and abstract shapes; ® EXPRESSIONISM> movement that uses colors in a distorted way to give an idea of anxiety; ® SURREALISM> movement that gave importance to the world of the unconscious. Even if the writers are heterogeneous, we can identify the common features: ® Fragmentation of the narrative point of view>the omniscient narrator no longer exists, such as we find in Dickens; ® Redefinition of the traditional concepts of time and place, represented as subjective, not objective dimensions; ® Use of experimental narrative techniques that aim to render the flux of thoughts that characterise the working of the mind; ® Rejectionof traditional grammar and punctuation; ® Useoffree verse and rejection of traditional verse forms in poetry; ® Use of complex vocabulary and concepts. The general idea that emerges from Modernist literature is that the human mind is at the centre of the writer's scrutiny. BRITAIN AND MODERNISM. In Britain the group of Modernist writers included authors such as the poet T.S. ELIOT , the novelists VIRGINIA WOOLF and JAMES JOYCE. Their main works are dated between 1922 and 1925 and deal (trattao) with the theme of unconscious. Many writers used the “STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS” techinque as a means of expressing the complex workings of the human mind. THE PRECURSORS OF MODERNISM: JAMES, LAWRENCE AND CONRAD. James , Lawrence and Conrad experimented new narrative techinques as opposed to Victorian prose. James, for example, wrote his novels from the point of view of one single character, adopting the ‘narrative consciousness’ techinque. Conrad, on the other hand, chose to do opposite: he used multiple points of view. His tecnique was based on the use of disconnected images and narrative details that left readers perplexed and gave them the idea of not being able to trust the narrator. Whit his novels, he catapults us into a silent and mysterious dimension that surrouns the meaning of lifeTrough their experimentations with forms and styles, writers like James and Conrad started to underline the idea that the self is a stable and fixed entity. The ida of the instability of the self had been introduced by Sigmund Freud, whose The interpretation of Dreams (1900) formalised the concept that consciousness is multi-layered and that reality exists only as it is perceived by the self. Freud's theories of psychoanalysis deeply influenced early 20th century authors and it gave them tools to explore the hidden (lato nascosto) self of the characters. MODERNIST WRITERS. The first who spoke of the stream of consciousness was William James and compared this stream to a river or stream that flowed (paragona questo flusso a un fiume o ad un ruscello che scorre). The ida of the stream of consciousness became one of the most adopted narrative techniques by modernist authors. The stream of