James Joyce + "Dubliners"., Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce + "Dubliners". e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! 6.19 JAMES JOYCE DUBLIN : 1882-1904 James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the eldest surviving child of his family. He was educated at Jesuit schools, before finally enrolling at University College, Dublin, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on Modern Languages in 1902. He was attracted to the freeing of Ireland from English dominance. His interest was for a European culture, in fact he thought of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. His attitude 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 Ireland’s awareness was by offering a realistic portrait of its life from a European and cosmopolitan viewpoint. He spent some time in Paris, where he intended to pursue a writing career, but his mother’s fatal illness brought him back to Dublin. He published his first short story, “The Sisters” in the “Evening Telegraph”. It would serve as the opening story in his “Dubliners” collection. In 1904 he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a 20-year-old chambermaid. They had their first date on 16th June 1904, which became the Bloomsday of “Ulysses”. TRIESTE : 1905-15 In 1905 the couple settled in Trieste, where Joyce began teaching English and met Italo Svevo. He had 2 children, Giorgio and Lucia, and married in 1931. The years in Trieste were difficult (financial problems); also, Joyce was in trouble because of obscene elements in his prose. The first of his works appeared 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, 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, since his position as a British national in Austrian-occupied Trieste left him no alternative. His works had done little to alleviate his financial difficulties, but he received several donations which enabled him to continue writing the novel “Ulysses”, which began to appear in serial form in “The Little Review” (1918), but was suspended because of obscenity. PARIS : 1920-40 In 1920 Joyce moved to Paris, where a bookseller agreed to publish “Ulysses” in 1922; but there was no British edition until 1937. This novel drew both praise and sharp criticism; T.S. Eliot declared that “Ulysses” was the most important expression which the modern age found. The novel traces the experiences of Mr Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly and the poet Stephen Dedalus from “A Portrait of the Artist”, on a single day, 16th June 1904, in Dublin. This period of success was also characterised by the worsening of Lucia’s mental illness; in fact, she was sent to a mental hospital in Paris. Although his daughter’s illness, his blindness and his father’s death, Joyce continued to write : he published “Finnegans Wake” (1939); with its puns and new words, this novel was even more difficult to read. ZURICH : 1940-41 In 1940, when France was occupied by the Germans, Joyce returned to Zurich. He never saw the end of World War II. Following an intestinal operation, he died in 1941. He was buried in Zurich. ORDINARY DUBLIN Though Joyce went into voluntary exile, he set all his works in Ireland and mostly in Dublin : he wanted to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives. 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. THE REBELLION AGAINST THE CHURCH Joyce challenged Catholicism. His hostility towards the Church was the revolt of the artist-heretic against the official doctrine and a provincial Church which had taken possession of Irish minds. It was like a conflict between a son and his parents linked to the quest for his artistic potentialities. STYLE Joyce was influenced by the French Symbolists; he believed in the impersonality of the artist, as Eliot. The artist’s task was to render life objectively in order to give back to the readers a true image of it. This led to the isolation and detachment of the artist from society (NO author’s viewpoint). Joyce used different points of view and narrative techniques appropriate to the characters. His style developed from the realism and the disciplined prose of “Dubliners” = he used the free direct speech, the interior monologue with 2 levels of narration, the extreme interior monologue. LANGUAGE = succession of words without punctuation or grammatical connections, infinite puns. Reality became the place of psychological projections, symbolic archetypes and cultural knowledge. KEY IDEA : A SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION OF TIME Joyce was a Modernist writer. The facts become confused, they are explored from different points of view and are presented as “clues” and not through the voice of an omniscient narrator. Joyce transcends photographic realism, since he collects and analyses the impressions and thoughts that an outer event has caused in the inner world of the character. Joyce’s stories and novels open IN MEDIAS RES with the analysis of a particular moment and the portrait of the character is based on introspection rather than on description. Time is perceived as subjective, leading to psychological change. The accurate description of Dublin is derived from the characters’ floating mind.