Scarica James Joyce: Life and Works (Dubliners and Ulysses) e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) Life and works - Born in Dublin, 1882 - Joyce’s father was a supporter of home rule for Ireland and Parnell’s ideas. So he remained victim of his ruin after the Catholic Church opposed to him. - He chose anti-heroes as protagonists of his stories, rejected paralysed atmosphere of Dublin. - He did not sympathize with Parnell’s ideas and nationalist movements, he considered patriotism as a movement paralysing freedom and creativity in Ireland. - 1905-1909, he wrote Dubliners - 1919 Ulysses published in installments in the Egoist, stopped because considered obscene. Literary career We can divide his literary production into two periods: - First: marked by a realistic technique. Quite linear plot, rich in details. Syntax is logical, not distorted, reflects everyday speech. One of the most important works: Dubliners. - Second: marked by transition from traditional approach to stage of experimentation. Rich in symbolism and allegory. Logical consequence of previous phase, same themes and setting. Language changes, rejects logical sequences and conventional syntax. The exile Voluntary exile in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. He became a cosmopolitan writer open to the influence of other intellectual traditions. He wanted to give a realistic portrait of common people’s life doing ordinary things, represented the whole mental and emotional reality. Joyce in Paris Ulysses banned in UK until 1922 and America until 1933. Published in Paris by Sylvia Beach, label Shakespeare and Company, epicenter of Anglo-American literary culture and modernism in Paris. Joyce in Trieste In Trieste he made a living writing articles for the local newspaper Il Piccolo and teaching English to rich families, classes at his own house or students’ ones. He was a teacher at the Berlitz School. He met Ettore Schmitz (Italo Svevo). Joyce helped him to become well-known in Europe. THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST Artist should be invisible, he must not express his own POV but thoughts and experience of other men. Joyce supported total objectivity and independence from moral, religious, political pressures. He had to be outside conventions and society because Dublin was the centre of paralysis, condition of death in life, incapacity of facing life, living up to their own ideals. EXPERIMENTATION Interested in all aspects of modern culture, including Freud’s psychoanalysis and experimentation in all fields of art. He created a new kind of dreamy language, mixture of existing words, inventive words. Syntax is disordered, punctuation non-existent in an immense flux of words. Alienation and paralysis Themes: failure to find a way out of “paralysis”, typical condition of modern man in the modern metropolis, and escape or failure of escaping. None of the characters is destined to find a way out, they are unable to cut the bonds linking them to their own world. Paralysis of Dublin is both physical (caused by external forces) and moral (religion, politics, culture). Joyce’s Dubliners: accept condition because they are unaware of it, or not have the courage to fight. They are spiritually weak and fearful, unable to communicate, paralysed in their relationships. Interior monologue - Narrative technique by which characters’ inner thoughts are revealed to the reader. - Evolution of the traditional monologue. The third person narrator soon disappears to leave room to the flux of thoughts, emotions and recollections. - Thoughts and feelings are linked together without apparent logical sequence, but the syntactic structure remains well-formed. Time - Innovation was influenced by Freud’s works and the new psychological theory of the concept of time, no longer seen as a series of points in an objective chronological sequence, but as a flux of subjective consciousness in which present, past and future co-exist. - Traditional division between fictional and chronological time does not hold. Chronological time is split into two: time taken by external events and time covered by recollected events. Stream of consciousness - Expression coined by the psychologist and philosopher William James, brother of the novelist Henry James, to describe the mind’s flux of thoughts. - Most famous example: last chapter of Ulysses, records thoughts of Molly Bloom, protagonist’s wife, while she is lying in bed, half-asleep, waiting for her husband’s return. - Punctuation has been almost completely abandoned. Only break in the flow is for a new paragraph, but again without punctuation in the end or capital letter at the beginning. JOYCE VS. SVEVO Difference between Svevo and Joyce is to be found in the use of the interior monologue. This technique is mainly used by Joyce. Svevo writes the word “monologue” but he never adds the adjective “interior” in his writings. JOYCE: The character is given the possibility to abandon to a flux of consciousness, to the most unexpected and incoherent associations, to the most extreme expressions of his/her inner being. Characters communicate directly with the reader, they let all consciousness come to light, even the darkest aspects of it. SVEVO: Svevo makes an organized, logical and controlled confession a naturalistic transcription of the puzzling, not logical, nonsensical aspect of the interior monologue.
