James Joyce, life ,Dubliners, ulysses: STREAM OF COSCIOUSNESS AND INTERIOR MONOLOGUE, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica James Joyce, life ,Dubliners, ulysses: STREAM OF COSCIOUSNESS AND INTERIOR MONOLOGUE e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Up to the First World War the historical background During Edward VII's reign (1901-10) The Liberal Party defeated the Conservatives in the elections of 1906 and the Labour Party entered the House of Commons for the first time. the Liberals introduced the Health and Insurance Act of 1911, to protect workers when they were sick or unemployed. There was also a period of great industrial unrest The First World War Germany's empire began to expand and Britain was faced with the threat of war. Britain needed allies and quickly solved old colonial problems with France and Russia. on 4th August 1914 (Fourteen) Britain declared war on Germany after Germany invaded France. Soon half the nations of the world were involved. It was a war in which, for the first time, more sophisticated weapons were introduced, such as machine- guns, tanks and later planes. It wasn't until the Kaiser abdicated in November 1918 that Germany finally surrendered. It had been called the 'Great War', due the many soldiers involved in one conflict. In 1919 the peace treaty was signed at Versailles and the League of Nations was set up,aimed at solving international problems and maintaining peace. Germany was not allowed to join. the American government, with Post-Revolution Communist Russia, voted against joining the League, preferring to remain isolated from European problems. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY An age of great change the literary context The Twentieth century was generally an age of great change both in literary contents and style. There was a rejection of everything that had come before, especially from the Victorian Age. of course the changes were not immediate and there was first a transitional period with authors like Conrad and Lawrence An age of transition Joseph Conrad , the English writer with his famous novella Heart of Darkness , can be seen as one of the main forerunners of Modernism due to his original use of the point of view and his treatment of time. The novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was not innovative in his literary style but his novels challenged conventions with new themes. his last novel, Lady Lover (1928),is a story about sexual relationships and class differences, produced such a scandal that its play was banned in England. Modernism Modernism is a general term that include other movements, this movements include Naturalism, Symbolism, Imagism, Futurism, Cubism, Vorticism, Expressionism and Surrealism. The second decade of the 20th century saw a new generation of writers emerging, generally known as 'modernists'. They moved away from the conventional literary form and, as a result of the diffusion of Freud's ideas on psychoanalysis, the human mind and the inner self, they aimed at giving a more complex vision of man and his world. The modernist novel Modernist writers were not interested in representing reality as it was, in a realistic or natural way, as previous writers had done.The 'new' writers saw their work as trying to represent inner life as an uninterrupted flow of thoughts which they called the stream of consciousness. To do this they used interior monologue as a form of expression, resulting in a complex language which follows the flow of the psychic life of their characters - the emphasis in these novels is on the thoughts of characters not on their actions. the narrator, who usually represents the link between text and reader, now became indifferent or neutral, or even invisible. JAMES JOYCE James Joyce (1882-1941) Born in Dublin into a large Roman Catholic family James Joyce received an excellent education . He gained a degree in modern languages. Due to his intolerant of the Catholic religion and the provincial life of Dublin, he moved to Paris but soon had to return to Dublin to assist his dying mother. While in Italy he became friendly with the Italian writer Italo Svevo, who was influenced by Joyce. in 1905 he completed his short story collection, Dubliners. At the outbreak of the First World War, Joyce went with his family to Zurich where he began to write Ulysses. he started his second major work , Finnegans Wake (published in 1939) and he suffering from a serious eye disease but he continued writing. James Joyce is probably one of the most innovators of the modern novel. He moved from the symbolic and realistic style of his first prose work, I.e. the collection of short stories Dubliners, to the revolutionary style (labelled modernist) of his later novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Dubliners: Published in 1914 in London, it is a collection of fifteen stories in which he represents the lives of different people living in Dublin. the stories are told from the point of view of the main character. The story was set in Dublin. The spirit of the city acts as a link between all the characters and the unity of experiences is underlined by the fact that a character from one story may happen to mention a character from another story, so creating an inter connecting web in the narrative. The fifteen stories follow the four phases of human life from childhood through to adolescence, maturity and public life (political, artistic and religious). The protagonists come from all social classes of life: maids, music teachers, clerks, students.. Joyce focuses on specific moments in their lives that, at first, seem to belong to the everyday activities, but they become special to the characters as they correspond to important moments of self awareness. The last story in the collection, "The Dead' usually considered one of the greatest short stories of the 20th century, where Joyce shows acute ability to render human emotions and relationships. Themes in Dubliners : The stories focus on two themes: paralysis and epiphany. • Paralysis can be described as a condition which is characteristic to modern man; the consequence of the frustrating circumstances of an unfulfilling job, the unhappiness caused by an unsuccessful marriage; a life which many do not like but which few are able to change. In most of the stories the protagonists have some desire but they are forced to give up because of their circumstances- family, culture, religion - that makes it impossible to react. • The second theme, epiphany, describes a revelation in the everyday life of the characters, of an emblematic truth or reality. It results in the characters having a more profound understanding of themselves but passively continue with their lives as before.