JAMES JOYCE AND ULYSSES, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica JAMES JOYCE AND ULYSSES e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Lezione 26 marzo The fourth subject of this course, after having seen the encyclopedic novel and pynchon now we are moving to an author that is still considered as part of the encyclopedic novel (Joyce was cited at least by 2 of the authors that we mentioned when talking about what the encyclopedic novel is, but in this case, James Joyce will reintroduce us to computational methods. The experience of reading that is at the center of empirical approaches can also be studied using an extremely close reading approach (we dealt with the pynchon wiki by seeing in very extreme details all the small connections that are found by the readers) here with Joyce we will talk more specifically about style, about the style of the author that here reached some of the highest levels in experimentalism and on the other hand we will see how this specific subject can be studied using computational methods and so using distant reading, that might sound a bit like a paradox because Joyce is an author that requires really attentive close reading, but it will be interesting to see this paradox, how using computational methods, how using distant reading we will be able to understand something more about the style of James Joyce. Introduction to the author and to its most famous book : Ulysses. (Finnegans Wakes is the most experimental in terms of language, style..) Irish author but that moved away from Dublin quite early in his life, in his works the city of Dublin will be always at the center but Joyce always considered himself as an exile, as a person who for mainly personal reasons decided to move away from Ireland and never come back. He studied there, in Dublin, and also in Dublin he met his future wife: Nora Barnacle, in a specific date that will be very important also for his literary production because it's the day when the entire plot of Ulysses takes place. He was also in Italy for a period, he was teaching English language in Trieste where he met Italo Svevo > this was a very important encounter specifically for Svevo because Joyce was one of the first to understand the potential in the literary production by Italo Svevo. He published this first book that is not a novel but a Collection of Short stories that is probably the easiest/the most accessible of joyce's book that is Dubliners , a title that is clearly dedicated and focused on the city of Dublin, he provides a semi-critical image of Dublin , even talking about paralysis, a moral and cultural paralysis that finds ITS Center in the city of Dublin, so he had some issues in publishing this book, because of his stronger criticism against the Irish Society, it took 9 years to Finally see this Collection of Short stories published. then 2 years later, in 1916 he published his first novel "A portrait of the artist as a young man" that for the first time introduced this semi-autobiographical approach because clearly the protagonist can be considered as an alter-ego of the author, of the author as a young man before becoming the artist, before becoming the writer. he also published collections of poems and plays but the most important work in his life , or at least the one with the greatest success is Ulysses, a novel that in the beginning was a short story o be inserted in Dubliners (he started working on that in 1914) but then he decided to expand it and it became a very complex and huge novel that was published in 1921 After Joyce moved to Paris, the last pages, the last lines or at least the last version of it was written in Paris, so part was written in Italy, then also in Paris. This book, Ulysses, obtained huge success , also stimulating a lot of polemics around it , Ulysses stimulated a huge interest towards the author but also many accused him of this hyper-experimentalism, of a use, not only of language but the presentation of the content for example was accused of pornographic value (also Virginia Woolf {an english author that is considered one of the main modernist author, who published at the same time of james joyce} thought that this novel was very close to a pornographic novel ) but still the success for joyce was huge. in these years, in the 20s, he started working at his third novel (that took him about 16/17 years for being printed) this book for many years was simply called "Work in progress" and joyce during the 20s and the 30s was publishing just some excerpts of this future novel that showed the extreme complexity in terms of language and style of what h was doing and this book that finally found the title "Finnegans Wake" was published in 1939, a date that is extremely significant because it's the date when the world was falling into the second world war and Joyce after moving to Zurich died , two years after the publication of "Finnegans Wake" = the final work of his production . a small production in the end , about 6 main publications , 3 novels but still this stimulated a huge interest , a research that is going on until now by focusing on these texts, trying to find new interpretations ; with Ulysses already this is strongly stimulated because Ulysses is a text that simulates multiple interpretations but with Finnegan wake this reaches really the extreme, with Finnegan wake we have an example of a novel that experiments so much , that really reaches the limit of entropy (the idea of entropy, of chaos) , there is an overload of information that is produced by this novel, by Finnegan wake and that at a certain point it is really close to the threshold of chaos, of noise ... but we will see that things are not like that, contents are extremely detailed , Joyce worked for many years in defining the structure, the contents of this novel but the main risk here is that complications make really difficult to get inside this novel. ULYSSES : the book that is considered the most important in Joyce production (many critics consider Finnegan wake as an excess in the sense that Joyce reached the highest level of his production with Ulysses that is already an extremely experimental and original novel and after that he did too much experimentation and Finnegans wake by some , by a minority is considered a failed work because it was demanding too much from the readers and also from himself). We are dealing with an encyclopedic author , an author who tried to reach the extreme levels of experimentation in terms of language, style (not that much with the references and citations like Thomas pynchon but still with a hug number of this) > this fact of citing a lot is very typical of postmodernism ( a movement in literary production especially after the 2nd world War , there is this tendency of reusing cultural references in a satirical way > Ulysses and Joyce strongly pertain to the movement of modernism > plays more on the structure of the novel and of course on the style , on the analysis of the characters that is brought to an extreme of experimentation that at a certain point also destroys the genre itself. ULYSSES changed things at the time when it was published , a prototype of what modern novel are (more than la recherche by Proust) At the time Joyce became famous, he had enough time to live just from his production even though his production was very limited , there was even a process in the States because his work was accused of pornography because in the States when Ulysses was published it was banished, but then in 1933 he won this process and Ulysses could be read also in the States. There is a strong connection between Ulysses and modernism , the 2 go together , the variety of forms, the experimentation in terms of style , of methods... (vedi Def di Childs sulla slide > the 2 concepts are inseparable With Ulysses we have to do an extremely close reading > Svevo talked about the fact that a reader that is not careful enough (lettore sbadato) is not a good reader for this kind of novel, Ulysses needs a readers that has a very focused attention , that needs to be always focused on theSeconda parte lezione 26 marzo content but also trying to see what is beyond the simple text , so looking at the symbolic references , at the experimentations in terms of style , the very intricate structure that this novel has .. Joyce himself by also playing with critics and the readers , he said that he put in this novel so many enigma and puzzles ... Joyce's scholars until recently they keep trying to understand what is said in this novel (nowadays there are societies dedicated to the study of Joyce that each year organize conferences.. There is an Italian society but also an international society, there are multiple summer schools, symposia... All of them containing multiple proposals that try to provide different interpretations of what Joyce was meaning within this novel and this is what Joyce was planning from the beginning , he wanted to produce a novel so complex and extensive in itself that at a certain point readers and scholars go on for the eternity in trying to Joyce was thinking about his production, the first style is defined as Narrative (young) and in the 4th chapter we have Narrative (mature) in the sense that we start from a style that is quite simple in itself , quite understandable and easy to read, but then things become more and more complex and we will see the complexity especially in the second half of this novel, with for ex the labyrinth that describes the style in wondering rocks (10th episode of Ulysses). Vediamo 3 of these episodes, the most experimental episodes, more specifically Sirens, the Oxen of the Sun and of course Penelope (the one at the end) to talk about what Joyce was doing with the style in Ulysses. Sirens : Joyce was keeping as reference the work by Homer , so in Ulysses Joyce is taking this model homaging it but also reverting it/ transforming it into something that is almost the opposite > the episode in the odyssey : the two sirens that are on their isle crying and bewitch (stregare) the men that are sailing close to this isle/ rock where the sirens are and of course that causes the shipwreck of the ships because the sailors get distracted and they go with their ships to hit the rocks and drown. In the end Odysseo decides to protect his men by using wax (cera/ cerume) on their ears so that they couldn't hear this bewitching song by the sirens but then he needed to listen to this beautiful song and so he had himself tied to the mast of the ship while telling his men not to listen to him and to ignore him and go on because he knew that he would have been bewitched by the sirens. > this is the model in Homer > what actually Joyce did was something quite different because we have first of all the 2 sirens that are 2 barmaids because the location here is a bar ,a dining room. Then we follow Bloom who spots the lover of his wife and he follows him but then he decides to enter inside this bar and he eats while hearing some men singing in the bar, so of course the element of music , of singing is still present but in the end the connections end up here ( there is nothing more than this, the 2 barmaids that are the sirens and music/songs) then the content is extremely different, here we have no real danger of sinking with ship and these barmaids do not play that strong and dominant role in this episode > but clearly the interest of Joyce was towards music because with this episode he understood the potential of using the music to define a very specific style , a very specific method of composition for this episode. In the end what he decided to use is the structure "fuga per canonem" = it is a specific genre in music that became very famous thanks to John Sebastian Bach that follows very strict rules with elements/ motives that are played at the beginning and then are modified, then there are multiple parts that are coming back with modifications and so on.. In the end Joyce did something quite simple with this episode in terms of structure , not that much in terms of language , but in terms of structure he did something very straight and direct : he divided the episode in 2 parts : the first part that is shorter that is nothing else but an ouverture, an exposition of the theme, that is something typical in fuga per canonem, at the beginning we have the simple exposition of the theme and this is developed and complexified more and more; because after this short ouverture there is the second part which is the development through repetition and variation. Nella slide vediamo the ouverture in Sirens , this is a very complex prose , it is some kind of lyrics at a certain point (il link sulla slide e' se vogliamo ascoltarne la lettura) in the end the ouverture is just a series of very short sentences one after the other and they seem not connected between each other , they look like random passages. When the ouverture stops it starts the actual development after the exposition , the development is much longer and with a style, with a structure that is more extensive and more readable. When we look at the beginning of the development we can see the connections with the ouverture because the first sentence "bronze by gold, miss Douce's head...." (vedi slide) is clearly a development of this very synthetic introduction of the first sentence. Then the "imperthnthn thnthnthn" is "your impertinent insolence" ; by reading the development we are able to recognize one by one all of these not very understandable references that are present in the ouverture. There are multiple interpretations of why Joyce did this , sulla slide vediamo la citaz di Sebastian Knowles who in 2014 proposed this interpretation of Sirens as a pure experimentation on language , according to him Joyce with this episode (Sirens) was trying to create an alternative language , a musical language , this once again is something that has to do with modernism > with modernism there was this strong interest in exploring the potential of language in itself as some kind of expression that goes beyond communication , an expression that has a potential in itself like a music that can break the Quarta parte lezione 26 marzo boundaries that are forced by meaning, by communication and reaching higher levels > but this is just one of the possible interpretations , there are many , the main idea of Joyce was that of stimulating the work of critics by offering also mysteries and opportunities to open and extend interpretations but without offering us a clear and unique answer. The second episode that we see is an episode that has a strong relevance especially if we think about the use of style in Ulysses by Joyce , it is Oxen of the Sun. Oxen of the Sun : It is probably the less known episode in Homer , when Odysseus/ Ulysses with his crew reached the island of the sun-God Helios and they have been warned not to touch the cattle of this island because it is sacred to the god, but then in any case , because they are hungry , they decide to slaughter in any case the cattle and then Zeus becomes angry and destroys the ships and the crew is stuck and also killed > this is the main subject of this episode with the lighting bolt (fulmine) of Zeus that is coming as the punishment for this breaking of the sacred rule in this island. With the Oxen of the Sun we don't have that much similarities > the main similarity that we can find is a loud crack of thunder , there is still the lighting bolt present here , there are some references to the cattle but with also a reflection that has more to do with procreation more in general because here the subject of Oxen Of the Sun is that of birth and reproduction of human beings > the location is the National Maternity Hospital and Bloom in this episode arrives to this hospital and he reaches a group of medicine students / medical students who have a very concrete and practical , and also a bit obscene view on the matter of progeny and generation while they are waiting for a pregnant woman to give life to a child. This is a quite important episode in Ulysses because finally the two main protagonists meet, it's a fundamental moment when the two finally meet and Leopold Bloom develops an interest towards this very intelligent but also problematic person that is Stephen Dedalus. The connections with the episode of Homer are not that strong but here , with this episode, Joyce reached almost the highest level of experimentalism in terms of style; because the main focus here is the growth of the embryo inside a womb (utero) / in the belly of the mother before giving birth > we can identify 9 main sections in this episode of Ulysses that are the 9 months of gestation of the embryo , the main theme is fertility but also there is something more and that's what distinguishes more strongly this episode : we can see all these reasonings about fertility and giving birth but we can also see a development of style and language , the main ideas of this episode is that of describing the evolution of the embryo, so the growth of humans from nothing to the first breath , with a parallel to the evolution of language and style, so there is this double level : on the one hand there is the evolution of the embryo, with the content of this episode , with medicine students waiting for the woman to give birth and talking about the development of the embryo in very concrete and sometimes obscene ways but then at the same time on the level of style we can perceive this evolution that goes on not simply on the level of content but also on the level of style. Here Joyce did something extremely complex and sophisticated : multiple analyse of this episode have identified about 30 different styles used line by line , so the first 6 lines are identified as 'primitive incantation', so we have the lowest/ earliest forms of use in language that have to do with the magical power of language , also to create life , so this is once again connected to fertility , to the growth of the embryo. Then 'Latin prose of Roman Historians', 'medieval latin' , 'Anglo-Saxon middle English', moving through time and even reaching imitations of more recent authors, at the time of Joyce, for ex Daniel Defoe , Johnathan Swift , even essayists like Charles Lamb of the 18th century.. Then Huxely , Dickens , Walter Pater, John Ruskin... A very attentive construction that is an extremely detailed experimentation on the potential of style > it is one of the most difficult in the episodes of Ulysses, it is very difficult because of this continuous changes in style that take place abruptly , from one paragraph to the other there is a strong change, and this is evident already at the beginning , these are the incantations ("Deshil Holles Eamus" repeated 3 times .. Vedi scritte in rosso nella slide > there is an extremely strong break / a change of style moving from the early incantation [terza scritta rossa nella slide] to the style of the Roman historians, so very logical and precise, descriptive.. [quarta scritta rossa]) The interesting thing in this episode is the conclusion , the conclusion is extremely chaotic and very difficult to interpret for the use of these illiterative elements "plaap! Plaap!" , "righto" with also some distorsions of the English language that Joyce himself defined as "frightful jumble ..." vedi riquadro bianco che compare sulla slide = it's an evolution of language that goes really towards the limits of chaos and of confusion , once again towards the limits of entropy > according to Joyce this is a representation of the language of the future , because we have seen the evolution of language from primitive incantations to the prose writers of the 18th and 19th centuries and then at the end what we have is an indication of what might come next > this is an anticipation of the style that will come with Finnegans Wake. Norris in 2008 noticed the fact that in this passage/ in this episode : Oxen of the Sun, we have this evolution of styles , that is described in a very structured way, so we have a developing of styles that ideally should reach a level of higher quality but actually what happens is different because "the developing styles..." vedi la citaz in osso sulla slide (Norris) = in this episode we see in a very structured way one style after the other / the evolution of style through time , but then in the end what we have is this confusion (ricordiamo la def di prima di Joyce stesso "frightful jumble=miscuglio ..") so according to Norris this reveals the distortions that are produced by these system of beliefs , values ... (Def in rosso) = this tells us that we cannot expect that through the evolution of language and style we will reach a higher level of knowledge , no, on the opposite , through this evolution we might understand that there are many issues inside the use of language / the traditional uses of language in literature but not only in literature , in culture more in general > it is like Joyce in this passage is making some kind of critic against what are the expectations of our society , or at least of the society of the time. But then there are also interpretations of this evolution of style that indicate the fact that maybe what Joyce is telling us is also something positive > vediamo le citazioni di Lora Pelaschiar and more specifically Julia Kristeva who is a very important literary scholar not only for the study of Joyce, here the idea is that especially this chaotic confusion can be considered as an example of the quality of the difference in the sense that, especially in the imitation of multiple styles che abbiamo visto prima, there is a very strong dominance of a model, a model that was defining what was the style in this passage , but here at the end we have this disgregation of style but also we do not have a model anymore , we have a mix of multiple models , and this is telling us something about the potential that there is creating hybrids of style , not a unique solution to the problem of how to convey a message, not simply one solution but trying to mix, to hybrid multiple approaches , languages and styles Ultima parte lezione 26 marzo and through this mix , through this hybrid creation , reaching new levels of communication , forms of communication that nobody has experienced so far. Julia Kristeva noticed something very effective on this , she noticed the fact that in this flow of this style there is a liquefaction of all the differences , the differences of multiple voices , but also of multiple identities, so for ex masculine and feminine are liquefacted , are decomposed and mixed in this new form of language , of style, that is trying really to bring together to a unity the multiple identities , that can be personal, ideological or also sexual in our culture. It is the first experiment of a new language that will come with Finnegans Wake, an experiment that tries to take all the possible differences , different languages , not only English but multiple languages from the world , mixing them together and defining a new form of communication that has as first goal that of trying