James Joyce: A Modernist Writer's Life and Literary Innovations, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce: A Modernist Writer's Life and Literary Innovations e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James Joyce (1882 – 1941) James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. He published "Portrait of the Artist" in 1916 and caught the attention of Ezra Pound. With "Ulysses," Joyce perfected his stream-of- consciousness style and became a literary celebrity. The explicit content of his prose brought about landmark legal decisions on obscenity. Joyce battled eye ailments for most of his life. He died in 1941. A portrait of the artist as a Young Man (1916) Joyce makes frequent use of interior monologue, direct and indirect. He wants to make the writer disappear and make the reader enters inside a character’s mind. In A portrait of the artist as a Young Man Joyce inserts a manifesto of what he sees as the role of the Modernist writer: “The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea. […] The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence.” Epiphanies Joyce’s works are full of epiphanies. An epiphany is a sudden revelation in which ‘the soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant’. Is a moment in which a sudden spiritual awakening is experienced, when ordinary thoughts and feelings come together to produce a new sudden awareness. This instant can be compared to Woolf’s idea of ‘vision’. "By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments." Dubliners It’s a collection of Joyce’s first stories published in 1914. The stories were written before 1907. Collectively they form a realistic and evocative portrait of the lives of ordinary people in Dublin. The stories are divided in 4 groups that corresponds to four phases of life: 1. Childhood 2. Adolescence 3. Maturity 4. Public life A significant theme in all the stories is the feeling of paralysis that many of the characters experience as a result of being tied to antiquated and limited cultural and social traditions. But also because of the rigidity of Catholicism. This is also reflected in relationship. The Dead (Public Life) With his wife Gretta, Gabriel Conroy attends the annual dancing party hosted by his two aging aunts, Julia and Kate Morkan, and their niece, Mary Jane. At the party, Gabriel experiences some uncomfortable confrontations. He makes a personal comment to Lily, the housemaid, that provokes a sharp reply, and during a dance he endures the taunts of his partner, Miss Ivors. Finally, Gabriel sees Gretta enraptured by a song sung toward the end of the party. Later, he learns that she was thinking of a former lover who had died for her. He sadly contemplates his life. It is considered realistic for the detailed descriptions of people and settings, it is also symbolic. The names of the character have a symbolic meaning (Gabriele -> archangel). Joyce gives us also a picture of inner thoughts and feeling of the characters. The central event is Gretta’s epiphany, which will lead to Gabriel’s own epiphany at the end. Is really complex. Eveline Eveline Hill sits at a window in her home and looks out onto the street while fondly recalling her childhood, when she played with other children in a field now developed with new homes. Her thoughts turn to her sometimes abusive father with whom she lives, and to the prospect of freeing herself from her hard life juggling jobs as a shop worker and a nanny to support herself and her father. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. As Eveline recalls, Frank’s courtship of her was pleasant until her father began to voice his disapproval and bicker with Frank. After that, the two lovers met clandestinely. As Eveline reviews her decision to embark on a new life, she holds in her lap two letters, one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She reasons that her life at home, cleaning and cooking, is hard but perhaps not the worst option—her father is not always mean, after all. The sound of a street organ then reminds her of her mother’s death, and her thoughts change course. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank. At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She appears detached and worried, overwhelmed by the images around her, and prays to God for direction. Her previous declaration of intent seems to have never happened. When the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. She clutches the barrier as Frank is swept into the throng moving toward the ship. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless. Ulysses Ulysses tells the story of a day in the life of advertising salesman Leopold Bloom. During this day three main characters wake up, have various encounters in Dublin, and go to sleep eighteen hours later. The central character, Leopold Bloom is Joyce’s common man. During his wanderings he meets the indigent writer Stephen Dedalus (he is considered Joyce alter ego). Stephen becomes momentarily Bloom’s adopted son: the alienated common man rescues (salva) the alienated artist and takes him home (e lo porta a casa). At home there is Molly, the Bloom’s wife, a voluptuous singer who is planning an afternoon of adultery with her music director. Ulysses is related to Homer’s great epic the Odissey. Joyce used the Odyssey as a framework for his book, arranging its characters and events around Homer’s heroic model, with: • Bloom as Ulysses; • Stephen as his son Telemachus; • Molly as the faithful Penelope. Ulysses is divided into three parts, imitating the three parts of Odyssey. Characters: • Leopold Bloom: a thirty-eight-year-old advertising canvasser in Dublin. Bloom was Jewish. He enjoys reading and thinking about science and inventions and explaining his knowledge to others. Bloom is compassionate and curious and loves music. He is preoccupied by his estrangement from his wife, Molly. • Marion (Molly) Bloom: Leopold Bloom’s wife. Molly Bloom is thirty-three years old, plump with dark coloring, good-looking, and flirtatious. She is not well-educated, but she is nevertheless clever and opinionated. She is a semi-professional singer. Molly is impatient with Bloom, especially about his refusal to be intimate with her since the death of their son, Rudy, eleven years ago.