Scarica James Joyce: Contrasting Irish Identity and Exploring the Inner World of Characters e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce. • Contrast with Yeats (supported the tradition) and the other literary contemporaries who tried to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity. The most important features of Joyce’s works • The setting of most of his works Ireland, especially Dublin is another character • He rebelled against the Catholic Church because suffocated the souls of Irish people (educated by Jesuit) • All the facts explored from different points of view simultaneously characters • Greater importance given to the inner world of the characters no longer a Victorian novel where everything was under a standard word transformed by the war, science progress single man at the center and to make the character express it self • Time perceived as subjective (time that the character perceives) • His task to render life objectively the artist do not influence anything in order to give back to the readers a true image of it. • Isolation and detachment of the artist from society ORDINARY DUBLIN Though Joyce went into voluntary exile at the age of twenty-two, he set all his works in Ireland and mostly in the city of Dublin. His effort was to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people. By portraying these ordinary Dubliners, he succeeded in representing the whole of man’s mental, emotional and biological reality, fusing it with the cultural heritage of modern civilisation and with the reality of the natural world around him. His style, technique and language developed from the realism and the disciplined prose of Dubliners, through an exploration of the characters’ impressions and points of view, through the use of free direct speech and the epiphany, to the interior monologue with two levels of narration up to the extreme interior monologue. Dubliners • Dubliners are described as afflicted people. • The people are not able to change paralysis It was the oppressive effects of religious, political, cultural and economic forces on the lives of lower- middle-class Dubliners that provided Joyce with the raw material for a psychologically realistic picture of Dubliners as affected people. The last story, ‘The Dead’, can be considered Joyce’s first masterpiece it is at once the summary and climax of Dubliners. What holds all these stories together is a particular structure and the presence of the same themes, symbols and narrative techniques. THE USE OF EPIPHANY The ‘epiphany’, that is, ‘the sudden spiritual manifestation’ caused by a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation, which is used to lead the character to a sudden self-realisation about himself/herself or about the reality surrounding him/her. A PERVASIVE THEME: PARALYSIS Joyce’s Dubliners either accept their condition because they are not aware of it or because they lack the courage to break the chains that bind them. The opposite of paralysis is ‘escape’ and its consequent failure. It originates from an impulse caused by a sense of enclosure that many characters experience, but none of them succeeds in overcoming; they live as exiles at home, unable to cut the bonds that tie them to their own world. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR AND THE SINGLE POINT Naturalistic, concise, detailed descriptions. Naturalism combined with symbolism double meaning of details. Each story opens in medias res and is mostly told from the perspective of a character. Use of free-direct speech and free-direct thought direct presentation of the character’s thoughts. Different linguistic registers the language suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters. Use of epiphany “the sudden spiritual manifestation” of an interior reality. Themes paralysis and escape. Absence of a didactic and moral aim because of the impersonality of the artist. THE DEAD • The protagonists: Gabriel Conroy, an embodiment of Joyce himself, and Gretta, his wife. • Epiphany the song The Lass of Aughrim, reminds Gretta of a young man, Michael Furey, who died for her when he was seventeen years old. Gabriel understands he is deader than Michael Furey in Gretta’s mind. • Symbols the snow, Gabriel’s journey to the west. The guests at the party belong to different social classes and are of different ages, sex and profession. Irish society shows its double side, represented by the Eastern and Western coasts, and their main cities. Dublin is more evidently influenced by England and its reserved, rational attitude, for both geographical and political reasons, while Galway has a stronger link with traditions, and a wilder nature (furious, as Michael’s surname suggests). Gabriel and Gretta (like Joyce and his wife Nora) represent these two opposites. Success and failure The story passes continuously from success to failure. On one hand the party has several happy moments, on the other hand, his wife’s revelations make him understand he has never been the protagonist of her life and has never lived a real passion.
