James Joyce - The Dubliners and Ulysses, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce - The Dubliners and Ulysses e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE = one of the most important novelist of all time, he was born in Dublin ⇝ he le Ireland in order to make some new experiences + to grow as an artist (= Verga) and human being → dubliners extremely conservative Catholics, quite Victorian in their frame of mind. However, his mother country has always been his first source of inspiration. He self-imposed exile in order to take distances and be able to represent Ireland from an objective pov. Relationship of love and hate for his city. He is the greatest representative of Modernism. He wrote - Dubliners → a collection of short stories taking place in the city of Dublin - The Bildungsroman A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a novel of formation with autobiographical features. It could be compared to Hesseʼs Siddhartha because all of the passages that took Joyce to be an artist are retraced. - Ulysses*, his masterpiece with constant references to the Odyssey → 800 pages divided into 18 chapters. A work that narrates one basic day of a single normal man called Leopold Bloom Really long novel because of the use of the interior monologue → inner time longer than actual one Dubliners = a collection of 15 short stories about 15 different common inhabitants of the city →all affected by moral paralysis = a spiritual and physical stagnation of the self that hit the whole Irish nation because the country does not evolve. Dublin, as the prototype of the paralysed city of modernity, is a very tough city to live in → the inhabitants cannot reach their desires, will nor ambitions because of the many many obstacles. The one and only way to get through this condition: epiphany literally the revelation of the divine nature of Jesus to mankind, in the Dubliners is the moment in which the characters experience the sudden revelation of their conditions of paralysis → awareness ≠ concrete change. Short stories are much more difficult to write: it must be concentrated to the essencial = the purpose is revealing an epiphany of the main character, could be at the beginning or at the end. Realising a fundamental truth about life that has never been discovered, the sudden revelation. Divided into 4 groups: 1. childhood (disillusionment and failure), 2. adolescence (∈ Eveline - impossibility to escape from suffering, passivity, paralysis of the will), 3. maturity and public life - adulthood (sterile relationship between irish and institutions). 4. the last one - The Dead The narrative technique used is the interior monologue → no longer an omniscient narrator who judges/comments + use of the free direct speech to simulate the stream of consciousness. Symbolic realism: the detailed descriptions of the environments are apparently meaningless → they have a deep symbolic meaning. The Dead Last and longest story → portrait of the Irish middle class, stuck in a condition of mediocrity. Gabriel is the prototype of the mediocre Irish middle-class man, who lives as a dead person. Gabriel Conry represents the destiny of Joyce if he didnʼt choose to leave Dublin. The story is told from Gabrielʼs pov. Gabriel and his wife Gretta are invited to a family reunion (a traditional dinner): description of the relationship of the 2 as traditional, full of prejudices. He is afraid of not being good enough for his family. Aer the euphoria of the party, they find themselves alone. Gabriel rediscovers inside him the moments of joy, intimacy and tenderness with his wife in a life dominated mostly by suffering, he feels a strong sensual need to love her. But his wife seems very sad. Once back at the hotel she explains to him the reason for her sadness: a song. During the party, it reminded her of a boy she had met in Galway before arriving in Dublin, Michael Fury who was ill and so much in love with her that he braved his own illness, standing in the rain to meet her, just before she le. He died 2 weeks aer she le. This song had brought her into a trance-like state, thinking about something of her past. When Gretta explains the reason for her sadness, Gabriel becomes very angry and jealous ⇝ a sense of defeat and mediocrity turning his life into a failure. While his wife falls asleep he starts to meditate: no longer angry but he feels estranged from her life. He starts to forgive her because he realises that sheʼs changed since knowing Michael + he realises that his soul already feels like it is dying, while the snow falls wearily on Dublin, covering the living and the dead, between whom, by now, there seems to be little difference. The snow is grey [symbolic realism] because the two worlds are merging together. For this reason he starts forgiving her because the time is passing and (it is better to die young but beautiful and fascinating) all these little things are trivial and meaningless + he understands that real love is compassion, forgiveness and empathy. 3 epiphanies: - Gretta, listening to the old song, remembers his past love - Gabrielʼs certainties collapse; heʼs shocked by the revelation but keeps on comforting her. - Little things are not important because everyone dies in the end ⇒ happy ending: Gabriel understands that was still in love with his wife even though the way he loves her changed with the passing of time → now he understands and forgives her. Eveline = a short story belonging to the adolescence section, interior indirect monologue. The protagonist is a 19 year-old girl who is looking outside the window at what is happening in the street ⇝ hears a melody that reminds her of a song from her past ⇒ turning point for the story to develop. Through the narration we can follow the thoughts of the protagonist but in reality sheʼs doing nothing, sheʼs just watching out of the window and collecting her memories. She thinks about the changes and the way the past used to be → remembers her childhood, her violent father, her dead mother and brother, and she also thinks about her current job. She has decided that she will leave with her boyfriend Frank for Buenos Aires, she has doubts about leaving her family. The ʻmoral paralysisʼ is represented by her indecision: she is like physically unable to move and the only 2 movement she does are - she stands up thinking about her motherʼs life, the life she does not want - firmly holding her hands on the iron railing (symbol of death, coldness), instead of moving to Frank. She was even unable to think - she prayed God to choose for her. Symbolic realism: iron = metaphor of dead/coldness; dust: something old fashioned like her state of mind; boat = sea monster, threatening + symbol of changing, starting a new life. ULYSSES* His materspiece was written the same day Joyce met the love of his life. Leopold Bloom embodies the so called anti-hero → with the mythical method (= constant juxtaposition of the mythical past [passages from the Odyssey] to explain the meaningless present). Eventhough it is a really structured work (= Divine Comedy) → no actual plot, itʼs an excuse to explore human minds.