Scarica James Joyce, Dubliners, Ulysses e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce Life: James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. After graduating, he left his city because he felt uncomfortable and unhappy in it; he didn’t like the society and he considered Dubliners as people without courage to change the political and social situation. He went to Paris, where he met the woman of his life, Nora Barnacle, considered not as intelligent and educated as Joyce. They fell in love and moved to Trieste, where Joyce worked as an English teacher; in this context he met the Italian novelist Italo Svevo. Joyce and Nora later lived in Paris, but they fled France for Zurich in advance of the Nazi invasion. He died at the age of 58 years old. Literary production: From the literary point of view he published a collection of poems called Chamber Music, which was followed seven years later, in 1914, by the short stories called Dubliners. He also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and some plays. Above all, his masterpiece is Ulysses, wrote in Paris and published in 1922. In the same year he published another novel called Finnegans Wake. Style: In his writings Joyce uses the interior monologue and the technique of epiphany. Through the interior monologue, the writer disappears and the readers find themselves directly inside a character’s mind. The second one, known as epiphany, according to Joyce is a very important moment in the story of men. We can define the epiphany as a sudden spiritual revelation which completely modifies the initial situation of the characters, caused by and external object or a banal situation; also objects assume a great importance in the story. One of the main works of Joyce, called Dubliners, presents this technique. Dubliners: It is a collection of short stories published in 1914 where are represented the lives of ordinary people in Dublin and the city itself, which is the real protagonist of the novel. The stories are divided into four groups that correspond to four ‘phases’ of life: Childhood (“The Sisters”, “Araby”); Adolescence (“Eveline”); Maturity (“Counterparts”, “Clay”); Public life (“Grace”, “The Dead”). All the stories led to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. In Dubliners the description is realistic, concise and with many details. There is a great use of the so called technique “epiphany”. This name comes from the arrival of Magi at a Bethlehem’s hut where Jesus was born. Themes: The paralysis of the man is one of the main themes of this short stories. It is another technique used by the author to point out the fact that many characters can’t move and change the society
