Scarica James Joyce: Dubliners and Ulysses e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, he was educated at Jesuit schools but he will be very hostile towards Catholicism and the Church. In his works, he describes the city of Dublin and its people, from an objective and European point of view. Joyce was an important Irish writer, especially thanks to the use of the interior monologue and the stream of consciousness. His modern novel was influenced by Freud's theory of the unconscious, Bergson’s theory of time and William James’s theory about the interior monologue. When he left to Trieste, he met Italo Svevo, he began teaching English and he published Dubliners. Dubliners is a collection of stories set in Dublin. He chose Dublin, because it’s his city, but also because it’s the center of the paralysis; a place where true feelings and compassions for others don’t exist. This paralysis was caused by religious, political, cultural and social reasons. His characters are part of the middle and lower class, he divided the work into four phases: Childhood, Adolescence, Maturity and Public Life. All stories have three aspects in common: paralysis, epiphany and escape. The main desire of the protagonist is to escape from the paralysis but they are unable to do so, they are unable to make decisions and they decide to accept their failure. The characters, trapped in the spider's web, find a turning point in the epiphany, they open their eyes, look at reality and rip the Schopenhauer’s veil of Maya. So they have the possibility to escape from Dublin and from the paralysis, but then something always happens that stops them and brings them back to the condition of paralysis. Joyce tried to represent the oppression of Dubliners through the direct and indirect interior monologue. One of the most important stories of the adolescence phase is Eveline, a nineteen-year-old girl who must take the decision that will change her life: running away with her boyfriend Frank in Buenos Aires and starting a new life with him or taking care of the house and family as he had promised to her to her mother on her deathbed. She is afraid of her father who abuses her and feels frustrated because of her job as a saleswoman. The night before leaving she heard a street organ playing, this event reminds her to the last night of her mother’s life. She decided to leave thinking about her mother’s boring and sad life. But when she arrives at the port with Frank, Eveline thinks back to her past, in particular the promise she made to her mother that is she would keep the family together. She stops and doesn’t follow her boyfriend, so Frank is forced to leave without her.
