James Joyce - Dubliners, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce - Dubliners e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE Joyce has set all his works in Ireland and mainly in the city of Dublin. By portraying ordinary Dubliners, he has managed to represent the entire mental, emotional and biological reality of man. Joyce, influenced by the French Symbolists, believed in the impersonality of the artist. In this way he objectively restored a faithful image of the city and of society, leading him to isolation and detachment from society. Dubliners consists of 15 short stories. The opening stories deal with childhood and youth in Dublin; the others concern the middle years of the characters and their stories. The stories are organized into four groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The last story, The Dead, was a late addition. The Dubliners are frustrated characters, failed in their aspirations, they are men and women unable to change the course of their lives. For example, Eveline instead of choosing a new life in Buenos Aires, she decides to stay in Dublin. The description in each story is realistic with an abundance of detail that not only serves a descriptive purpose but also has symbolic meaning. His style in Dubliners is characterized by two distinct elements: the interior monologue, used to represent the unspoken activity of the mind before it is ordered in discourse characterized by its lack of chronological order. Paralysis is a recurring theme in Dubliners. The paralysis that Joyce wanted to represent is both physical and moral, that is linked to religion, politics and culture. Joyce's Dubliners accept their condition either because they are unaware of it or because they lack the courage to connect with the past. The opposite of paralysis is "escape" and its consequent failure. It arises from an impulse caused by a sense of closure that many characters feel, but none of them can break free. The works of James Joyce reveal the love and hate relationship that the writer had with his homeland, Ireland. Even though he left Dublin and never returned, the emotional and spiritual connection to his hometown was never completely severed. Dublin for Joyce was the centre of paralysis, where no spiritual growth was possible. The technique called "epiphany" is 'the sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object, or a trivial situation, which reveals the character's inner truths. Gabriel experiences his epiphany when he realizes the people at the party are spiritually dead, while the dead Michael Furey is still alive, as he had the courage to die for love, going against social rules. He becomes aware of the superficiality of his relationship with his wife that he thought to know very well. The narrative technique mainly used by modern novelists was the so-called stream of consciousness, that is the continuous flow of thoughts and sensations that characterize the human mind. Gabriel has many faces. To his aunts, he is a loving family man, bringing his cheerful presence to the party and performing typically masculine duties such as carving the goose. With other female characters, such as Miss Ivors, Lily the housemaid, and his wife, Gretta, he is less able to forge a connection, and his attempts often become awkward, and even offensive. With Miss Ivors, he gets defensive in a conversation about his plans to go on a cycling tour, and he offends Lily when he teases her about having a boyfriend. Gretta inspires fondness and tenderness in him, but he mainly feels mastery over her. Such qualities do not make Gabriel sympathetic, but rather make him an example of a man whose inner life struggles to keep pace with and adjust to the world around him. Gabriel has one moment of spontaneous, honest speech, when he dances with Miss Ivors, she interrogates him about his plans to travel in countries other than Ireland and asks him why he won’t stay in Ireland and learn more about his own country. Gabriel responds, “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!”. Additionally, he tells her that he is uninterested in a trip to the west of Ireland, preferring to holiday in Europe. For this reason, she calls him West Briton, an Irishman who identifies mainly with England, such as a cultural traitor, and this appears to be at least partly true. Gabriel is the only character of the Dubliners whose escape seems not to fail. He returned to Dublin for the Christmas party, so unlike Eveline he managed to escape. Gabriel thinks he is free, he feels superior, during the speech he wants to show that he is a well-educated man, that he has a magnificent life, that he lives thanks to his salary, moreover he feels better than the others, in fact when choosing what to say in his speech, he excludes some topics because he claims that others would not understand him. Gabriel’s speech is divided into 5 parts: - Hospitality = he speaks of Ireland with affection and praises the attitudes of the Irish, in particular referring to their sense of hospitality that is a typical Irish virtue. Hospitality is the only positive trait of Dubliners that Joyce describes. Joyce represents the hospitality of the Dubliners through the description of the party thrown by Gabriel’s aunts and of the dinner given by them. - The past contrasted with the present. - Sad memories = the people who are no more with us. - “The 3 Graces of Dublin’s musical world”, that are his aunts and Mary Jane (that is an erudite metaphor). - Paris (erudite metaphor) = like Paris he would not like to choose among the 3. At last, he decides not to quote Browning as he thinks browning would be too much for his audience. While Gabriel and Gretta are at the Morkans’ party, their maid Bessie takes care of the children, so they don’t have to worry. Throughout the party we see that Gretta and Gabriel’s relationship is close: they joke with each other about Gabriel making her wear her galoshes, and after she notices the tense conversation he has with Miss Ivors, she comes over to check on him. As the party progresses, Gretta experiences an epiphany as she is reminded of her heritage and her life as a young girl in the West of Ireland, Galway, especially when Mr. Bartell D’Arcy sings The Lass of Aughrim. She’s never told her husband the story of her first love, but she seems to love him anyway. When Gabriel discovers about Michael Furey, he realizes that he will be always paralyses in the state of a shadow for her wife, and not in the man she loved and will love for the rest of her life as Michael. His success in life, work and love turns into a terrible thing for him, he thought he managed to escape from society, but in reality he stayed there. He realizes that his marriage with Gretta never had true love but also that his life in general has been passionless and emotionless. We cannot say that the marriage between Gretta and Gabriel is happy, at the same time we cannot speak of betrayal because the story between Gretta and Michael happened before the two of them met but despite this the memory of Michal lives in Gretta's mind. Gabriel looks out at the snow and acknowledges that the coldness of the snow has a numb or paralysis like effect on the country of Ireland much like his life. He also acknowledges that Michael Furey, despite both being dead and a part of Gretta’s past, is still very much alive. Michael lives on in her memory as well as her heart as she will always have emotions towards this man despite him being long gone. Michael and Gabriel shared little except their love for Gretta. Michael is headstrong, talented, sickly, but also careless about life. Gabriel is, by comparison, observant, steady, respectable, and determined to enjoy his possessions (especially Gretta) and his high status compared to many