James Joyce e Dubliners + Eveline, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

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JAMES JOYCE ● was born in Dublin in 1882 into a large Catholic family ● in 1898 he entered University College Dublin, to study English, French and Italian ● he went to France to study medicine → but had to come back home shortly after because of his mother's illness ● her eventual death was a traumatic experience → Joyce found relief in literature ● the turning point of his life was the day of his first outing with Nora Barnacle (his future lifelong companion) = on that one day, 16 June 1904, Joyce would later set all the events narrated in his monumental masterpiece, Ulysses (1922) ● he moved to Trieste → where he experienced economic issues: 1. because of: - his drinking habits - his carelessness with money 2. consequences: - he took different jobs (teacher and bank clerk) - at first he couldn't publish Dubliners → later he was helped by his student Italo Svevo ● with the outbreak of World War I, the Joyces moved to neutral Zurich → where he was influenced by the bohemian and multilingual atmosphere ● he settled in Paris in 1920 where he devoted himself to full-time writing → but after the German occupation of France during the second world war he was forced to resettle in Switzerland ● he died in Zurich in 1941 THE ROLE OF ART He thought that art had the important social function of increasing people's awareness of their own condition → in order to do so literary writing had to provide readers with an objective image of life: ● by representing the whole range of human experiences ● without any form of religious, political or social restriction For an Irishman like Joyce, that meant his total independence from the patriotic spirit of the time → he considered the nationalist movements: ● consequences of the excessive power of the Catholic Church of Ireland ● limit to people's pursuit of happiness and personal freedom THEMES Recurrent themes in Joyce's works are: ● paralysis ● search for freedom ● exile ● universality of the human condition In particular, in order to express the feelings as objectively as possible, Joyce believed that the artist should have been completely invisible in his works: ● a work of art had to be a totally impersonal creation → where no judgement was offered ● this detachment allowed a great interest in the characters' subjectivities: 1. conditioned by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories 2. focusing on the inner world of his protagonists 3. exploring issues, such as sexual repression, taboos and guilt 4. adopting a variety of narrative voices, viewpoints and styles so as to give an authentic portrayal of their states of mind STYLE Joyce refused to be considered a follower of either realism or symbolism since he combined both in his works → his writing style evolved: 1. from the linear plot and logical syntax of the stories collected in Dubliners 2. to the extreme experimentation of Ulysses → in order to reproduce the fluid consciousness of the protagonist His works are full of: ● allegories ● symbols = exemple: the city of Dublin is the centre of the modern world and the symbol of the paralysis of man DUBLINERS ● published in 1914 ● is a collection of short stories written between 1904 and 1907 STRUCTURE Joyce wanted to represent the different stages of human life → the 15 stories can be arranged thematically: ● the first 3 of them are stories of childhood: ● 4 deal with adolescence ● 4 with mature life ● 3 with public life ● with the last story acting as a sort of epilogue to the whole collection: The Dead THEMES Although set in different parts of Dublin and focused on people of all ages, backgrounds and professions, Joyce's stories reveal a series of recurring preoccupations: ● the experience of death, love, disappointment and betrayal ● exhaustion, weariness and alcohol abuse ● the encounter between generations and the difficult relationship between men and women ● paralysis, which Joyce perceived as a distinctive mark of the Irish capital at the turn of the 20th century → all the protagonist of his stories are ultimately unable to achieve freedom and independence STYLE ● Joyce's stories distinguish themselves for their descriptive precision and psychological penetration → the writer's prose is clear, concise and detached = he managed to evoke whole settings and create a sense of place with great economy of detail and without any form of authorial comment ● the events are always told from a character's perspective and include interior monologues and free indirect speech in order to provide each of his Dubliners with a distinctive voice ● he moved from first-person to third-person narrative: 1. adapting the language to the characters' social backgrounds 2. showing a remarkable understanding of human nature in key moments of painful self-realisation ● borrowing from Christian terminology: 1. he called these sudden awakenings "epiphanies" 2. described them as being triggered by trivial and apparently insignificant experiences (e.g., words, gestures, objects, etc.)