James Joyce - Dubliners, Eveline, Ulysses, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce - Dubliners, Eveline, Ulysses e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce Dubliners -> acute analysis of Dublin's life ("the city seemed to me the centre of paralysis”) -> 15 stories all written by 1905, except for The Dead (written in 1907) Themes in Dubliners -> paralysis and epiphany • Paralysis: characteristic condition of the modern man; consequence of a frenetic city life; frustration/ unhappiness/loneliness for an unfulfilling job/unsuccessful marriage/friendship => a life which many do not like but which few are able to change -> desire of the protagonists to fulfill -> attempt -> forced to give up because of their circumstances: family, culture, religion (impossible to react) • Epiphany: sudden revelation in the everyday life of the characters; emblematic truth or reality -> more profound understanding of themselves and of the situation. But in the end they don’t act upon this realization, they passively continue with their lives as before. Style: essentially realistic, scrupulously detailed, the ability to create a sense of place and remarkable moments of sudden insight (characteristics of Joyce's art) => he called these moments of insight “epiphanies”; the original meaning of epiphany was the showing of the Christ child to the Magi, but Joyce uses it to express a sudden revelation (the sudden spiritual awakening in a novel/story, when all the petty details/thoughts/gestures/feelings produce a new sudden awareness. There is an epiphany when details or "moments", buried for years in one's memory, suddenly surface in the mind and start a long/painful mental labour. Example: The Dead The Dead -> last story of Dubliners - climax to the theme of decay and stagnation that runs through all the stories - developes a more compassionate view of the lives of its characters -> moving away from the rigorously realistic and objective presentation of their lives - more intimate study of the characters' inner lives (developed in the “stream of consciousness technique of his later novels) Plot -> 2 main parts: 1. takes place at a dinner party shortly after Christmas -> 2. a kind of musical coda, the central character (Gabriel Conroy) meditates in a hotel room on what has passed, and is overwhelmed by the futility of his own life as well as those of the men and women whose company he has just left. • The first section is set at the house of Kare and Julia Morkan (Gabriel’s aunts) -> two elderly unmarried sisters, every year hold a party for their family, friends (they give music lessons). They represent the contemporary Ireland, including the different generations, religious denominations (Catholic and Protestant) and political sympathies. • All the events are viewed from Gabriel Conroy’s point of view: he is a schoolteacher and critic, married to a beautiful woman, Gretta, who is also present at the party. • High point of the party for Gabriel: his speech after dinner, is applauded by everyone and he leaves the party feeling self-satisfied and exultant. • When he and Gretta walk home he is filled with love and desire for her, and remembers the happy moments together. • But once they reach their hotel bedroom (intimacy) he realizes that his wife is crying -> he try to comfort her and find out that an old Irish song (sung at the party) had brought back to her thoughts the memory of a young man (Michael Furey) who had been in love with her and had died for her sake at the age of seventeen. • Gretta falls asleep and Gabriel lies awake and thinks of the events of the night: his own fatuous complacency, his petty irritations and weak desires, the futility of the lives Title: referred to Gabriel himself, to his aunts, to the guests of the party, to all the people of Ireland -> after his wife's story Gabriel sees the events of the evening in a new light: at the party he told the story of Patrick Morkan’s mill-horse -> the horse walked round and round all day long to work the starch mill; one day Patrick decided to see the military parade in the park, so he went with his carriage driver by the horse. But when it got into the James Joyce centre of town, as he always did, began to walk round and round in circles about King William's statue (led English army to a bloody victory over the Irish, battle of the Boyne) => miniature allegory of the futile/obsessive nature of Irish politics, with the central fact of English domination at its heart This story merges in other events of the evening in Gabriel’s silent thought of realization - short lapse of time, after which the vision/epiphany takes place: Gabriel is in bed with his sleeping wife; the scene loses any precise temporal connotation and assumes a tone of universal, eternal truth. When Gretta recalls Michael starts a process of self-revelation -> he slowly discovers himself; he and the guest are deader than Michael Furey; his self destroyed, his identity gone, he becomes one with all the living and the dead. He feels the contrast: his own prudence and indecision / Michael’s courage. - In the end, Gabriel expands his feelings of helplessness into a vision of his country and countrymen as the living dead -> he’s not alone End: snow quietly falling upon the city -> evident symbolism: = hopeless solitude and incommunicability of man = isolation and alienation of the artist in Dublin and in Ireland -> identify Conroy with Joyce himself / what he would have become if he had not left Dublin (city paralyzed by old traditions and an obsolete culture; symbolically turned into a white vast cemetery under the snow falling alike "upon all the living and the dead”) Meaning -> realism + symbolism: detailed description + overload of symbols (ex. personal names); - Gabriel (Bible): both the prince of fire and the angel of death. Often connected with warmth, therefore with fire, and can be considered spiritually dead until the end. - Michael: is an angel, will live in Gretta's memory forever, eclipsing the weak presence of her husband. - Antithesis: metaphorical pattern of life and death -> the living are shown as spiritually dead = Michael is physically dead but alive in Gretta's heart -> the snow = symbolic reconciliation of life and death: symbol of death (it covers, hopeless solitude, incommunicability, isolation and alienation of the artist) and symbol of purification and life (it clears the world of all negative images) -> the journey: Gabriel feels the need to"set out on his journey westward” -> "going west” = “dying”; to Joyce means leaving Ireland; Gretta and Michael (lived/loved in Galway) represent the reality that must be faced -> ambiguous: he goes towards the west to meet both life and death Language - alternating descriptive mode and narrative mode - final sequence filtered through Gabriel's point of view, with his thoughts wandering between past and present. - language used in this passage is highly poetical and musical -> alliterations, repetitions and chiasms. Content -> thought wandering from the present to the past and to the future: - past simple, the present of the narration; - past perfect, the past of the narration; - conditional, the future of the narration, James Joyce - 3 Institution - family, church and politics - dominated and paralyzed the people’s lives -> Dublin was a prison Short stories -> beginning of Joyce: easy, boring, repetitive - Style: simple because he writes about simple people of Dublin, their lives are monotonous => Style reflects content (key to Joyce’s works) - 26 stories in total, divided in 4 groups: 3. Told by the point of view of children 4. Told by the point of view of teenagers 5. Told by the point of view of adults 6. About the public life in general Joyce uses Bruno’s multiples perspectives to describe the city Dublin The last story is “The Dead” -> symbolically. The final word in the book it’s the word dead: Joyce is saying the the Dubliners are morally dead, he saw Dublin as death at that time James Joyce The magazines said that his works were too negative and depressing, the Dubliners didn’t want to read it even if they were dedicated to Dublin. He decided to leave Dublin because there was no freedom of speech. A portrait of the Artist as a young man -> self portrait (artistic selfie) -> novel not autobiography -> express his idea of what art is and what the artist should be (philosopher and artist) Stephen Daedalus = James Joyce (describes his elementary school and university) He goes to a school that is organized by the church, that try to convince boys to become soldiers; he wanted to be an artist. At the end he decide to become a priest of art / imagination Superstitious man -> dates, numbers, colors, names, gestures had symbolical importance in his life and in his works: Stephen -> the first Christian to die for his religion Daedalus -> Greek mythology, he is the creator, artist, genius, artisan. He saw himself like that and build literary labour. The artist for Joyce: The artist, like the god of the creations, remains invisible: He should not interfere with the art; the style must come from the content, should be organic. All his 4 books are written in different styles depending on the contents = Joyce is a stylist Stephen Daedalus decides to leave Dublin for the same reason of Joyce, he refuses to serve the 3 institutions that guided the people of the city. Silence -> Joyce never spoke public about his works Exile -> he follow the example of Bruno Cunning -> the quality of a fox: smart worker, cunning worker -> he created his own world 1999: rating the 100 best novels of the XX century 77°: James Joyce -> Finnegan’s Wake 3°: James Joyce -> A portrait of an Artist as a young man 1°: James Joyce -> Ulysses “A classic is a book that everybody loves but nobody reads” Ulysses - 700 pages - 200 characters - The action is compressed in 1 single day -> 16 June 1904, Thursday (Bloomsday) => Nothing is ordinary: “in the ordinary you find the extraordinary” Bloom is Jewish, not Catholics like everyone, why? A protest against the Irish literary revival. He has breakfast and then spent the rest of the day walking through Dublin He goes to many different locations At midnight he returned home to his wife Molly waiting for him James Joyce Ulysses long trip and then comes back to Penelope Bloom is a mini Ulysses modern Leopolda Bloom Molly bloom Stephen Daedalus Joyce superimposed the original legend of Ulysses on mister blooms day Everything is symbolic to the original legend of Ulysses Level of the heroic Converting everyday life into a permanent artistic life Each chapter is divested by a line, no titles or numbers. The chapter have secrets titles from the original legend of Ulysses The first the chapters can be considers as a continuation of a portrait Each chapter is written in a different style of English Carefully engenders Chapter 7 he is in a office -> headlines and paragraph as a giornale Chapter 14 -he is in a maternity hospital - > nine sections, nine months of the pregnancy twenty different style of English in chronological order. Development of English language Chapter 15, he is in a brothel (bordello) -> very dramatic, style of a drama, he writes it as a play. Chapter 18 (final), Molly / Penelope is in bed but not sleeping, waiting for her husband. She’s thinking No punctuation -> when you think you don’t do it with punctuation. 40 pages In Ulysses he wanted to present the positive side of Dublin, Joyce said that was a great celebration of the city (language, literature and life ) Positive word at the end of a positive book -> yes Most positive word in the English language Frank budgen -> friend Describes in 1 book a conversation with Joyce about writing Ulysses The perfect order of words in the sentence -> musically, sound, position Perfect balance between sound and meaning But at some point he discover that sound is more important that meaning Finnegans wake Finn Mac cool