James Joyce: Life, Works, and Literary Innovations, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce: Life, Works, and Literary Innovations e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! James JOYCE (1882-1941) Life and works Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. During his the course of his studies he demonstrated extraordinary academic ability. He went to Paris to study medicine but he changes his mind and started to write poems and prose sketches and developing his highly distinctive atheistic theories. After the death of his mother he met Nora Barnacle with whom he leave Ireland and go to the continent. Joyce worked in Trieste as English teacher and here he had two children. Joyce published a collection of poetry and after seven years his masterpiece “Dubliners”. During the world war Joyce go to neutral Switzerland where he saw the publication of some works: his autobiographical novel and his masterpiece “Ulysses” that was declared obscene and banned in Britain and America and was publish only in Paris (1922). In the same time he worked on his experimental novel “Finnegans Wake” to brake completely English syntax and grammar and inventing its own polylinguistic vocabulary. Famously he said that he wants to keep literary historians busy for the next four hundred years. Joyce make frequent use of interior monologue, both direct and indirect. Through this technique, the writer almost disappears and readers find themselves directly inside a character’s mind. Joyce’s stories and novels are characterized by peaks of intensity in the narrator that the writer calls “epiphanies”. An epiphany is a sudden revelation, it is a moment in which thoughts and filings come together to produce a new sudden awareness. • He was born in Ireland into a middle-class family. • Influences in his childhood Jesuits (for the education) • Love he had a relationship with Nora Barnacle and they married only after the born of their 1st child. • Travels he went several time to Paris, but he went also to Croatia, to Italy, to Zurich (during the World War I). he was a cosmopolitan writer (a citizen of the world). • Personality before the meeting with Nora Barnacle he abandoned himself to the dissolute life (he became also an alcohol addicted). Features and Themes • Artist it had to be “invisible” in his work (he must not express his own point of view). He had only to report the thought and the experience of his characters. • Relationship with Ireland Joyce rejected Irish life, and he accused the Irish people to be passive. He loved and hated Dublin because he was born here, but it was a city characterized by the Passivity (it wasn’t opened to the novelties). • Influences Freudian Psychoanalysis, literary traditions of all Europe, realism and symbolism. • Language he created a new kind of dream language (mixture of existing words, inventive words and non-existent words). • He used the interior monologue: characterized by lack of punctuation, onomatopoeic words, puns. He was the forerunner of existentialism and of the theatre of the absurd. • Comparison with Swift both were Irish man, both opposed England and accused the Irish people to be passive. • Comparison with Wilde both abandoned themselves to the dissolute life (Wilde because was homosexual, Joyce because was an alcohol addicted). Dubliners Joyce’s first short stories were published in a collection called Dubliners. This Collection form a realistic ad highly suggestive portrait of the lives of ordinary people in Dublin. The stories are split in four groups that correspond to four “phases” of life: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. A significant theme in all the stories is the feeling of paralysis that many characters feels because they are tied to social tradition. This is also reflected in their relationships inhibited by moral code. Joyce defined Dublin as “the centre of paralysis”. The laste story “the dead” can be considered a culmination of the feeling which characterized the spiritual life of the city.It is divided in 4 section that represent the ages of man: • Childhood • Adolescence • Maturity • Public Life Focus on the text: “the Dead” The plot: “the Dead” begins with an after-charismas dinner party. The protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, go to the party with his wife Gretta and house becomes a sort of microcosm of contemporary Ireland and her traditions with guests represent different generations. Gabriel after the party remembers the best moments of his married life and he feels desire for his wife Gretta. When they reach he realizes that Gretta is crying because at the end of the party she had her sad epiphany: listening an old Irish song she remembered her first and only true love, a young man who she thinks died or her. At this point when Gretta falls asleep Gabriel looking outside window where the snow is falling, has his own epiphany. He realizes the insignificant of his own life and of those around him. Features and themes Although “the Dead” can still be considered realistic for its description, at the same time it is highly symbolic. For example names of characters carry a symbolic meaning: The protagonist, Gabriel, has the name of the archangel who plays trumpet of the last Judgment. Joyce uses indirect interior monologue, a technique which will be better developed in his later work. He tests it to give us a realistic picture of characters’ thoughts and feeling. The central event of the story is Gretta’s epiphany which will lead to Gabriel’s epiphany. Gretta stop for a moment on the stairs when she hears a song from her past and it’s as she returned to her lost youth (gioventù). Her epiphany is reflected in Gabriel while he is watching her from the bottom of the stairs. In this sense it is an epiphany for him too. The auditory epiphany of Gretta coincides with Gabriel’s visual epiphany. In the second epiphany of Gabriel looking out the window at the all covering snow reflects on the insignificance of the most moments of existence which fade like all the rest into oblivion. Focus on the text: Ulysses It basically tells the story of a day in the life of Leopold Bloom who gets up and walks around Dublin meeting various people including the writer Stephen Dedalus before finally going home to his wife Molly. Ulysses is the occasionally parody of the epic travels by Homers Odyssey infect Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, like Odysseus go around Dublin in a series of inconclusive errands. The differences are: the social status of protagonists, their nature, the religion vision. Story: he talks about 1 day (June 16, 1904) of the life of 3 Dubliners and is divided in 3 parts • In this part the protagonist is Stephen Dedalus (who represents Ulysses’ son Telemachus) a young man with intellectual ambitions, the enemy of his own country and a martyr to art. His name is taken from the 1st Christian martyr (who had preached the Gospel to the Jews and had insulted them) infact Stephen Dedalus wants to preach the Gospel of art to the Irishman. His surname derives from the legendary Greek artificer. • This part is dominated by Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged man, who wanders around Dublin as Ulysses had wandered around the Mediterranean and he had some adventures. • This part is dominated by Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom (Ulysses’s Penelope). The novel begins with Stephen Dedalus who is forced to wander the streets of Dublin in search of a father and a home. He meets Leopold Bloom who adopts him. At home is Molly Bloom who is waiting for the wanderers as Penelope but she isn’t so faithful as Ulysses’s wife. Parallel with Odyssey: the story is divided is 18 sections and each one corresponds to one of the episode of the Odyssey (he wanted to underline that Bloom is the modern Ulysses, anti-hero, who represents all mankind). -Telemachus: reflects the theme of the 1st book of the Odyssey in which Ulysses’ son is forced to live with her mother’s suitors who maltreat him, so he seeks news of his father. In this section Stephen is evicted from the tower on the Irish coasts by his companions. The colours are white and Gold and the symbol is Heir. - Nestor: the counterpart of Nestor (the wise king in the Odyssey) is Mr Deasy, the headmaster of Stephen’s School. The Art is history, the colour is brown, the symbol is Horse. - Hades: there is Bloom’s meditation on death, while in the Odyssey Ulysses visits the underworld and speaks with the souls of the dead. The art is Philosophy and the colour is green. -Circe: Stephen and Bloom visited a brothel and they finally escape from total degradation. The organ is genitals, the art is Botany and the symbol Eucharist. - Penelope: represents the goal of the wanderings of Bloom and Stephen. There is the Molly’s monologue. She is lies on the bed near his husband and reflects on her past and present. Joyce represented Molly’s thoughts with the interior monologue. The organ is the flesh, the symbol the Earth. Structure: is peculiar, Joyce divided the novel in chapters with titles, scenes, organs, hours, art, colours and symbols that the reader had to understand. Characters: - Stephen Dedalusà is pure intellect and embodies every young men sicking maturity. - Molly Bloomà Stand for flesh, since she identifies herself totally with her sensual nature and fecundity. She is both the origin of man’s experience (the mother) and its objective (the lover). -Leopold Bloomà he represent all the mankind. He is the alienated man and artist. Leopold and Stephen are complementary characters: they exists in mutual need (the artist aim is to race the common man from effemerality to permanents and the common man exists has the artist’s inexhaustible material. Themes: travel of the humanity (it’s the story of a travel but the protagonist remains always in Dublin) and the relationship between molly, Leopold and son (that Leopold wanted to have but he couldn’t). The modern anti-hero We can make a parallelism also with their structures. The novel is composed by 18 episodes modeled on Homer’s text, but in Ulysses these become parody. Joyce wants shows how problems and tragedies of classical world are the same of the modern man. The only difference is that the modern man isn’t an hero but he is an imperfect character and he cannot rely on God’s kindness. An odyssey in the consciousness The various odysseys of Bloom, Stephen and Molly are voyages into their own consciousness, which we are invited to listen to. Like David Lodge (critic) says: “it is like wearing earphones plugged into someone’s brain, listening impressions, reflections, questions, memories and fantasies associated with ideas and feelings. In this interior monologue, Joyce simulates the workings of consciousness using incomplete sentences, leaving a thought unfinished to go on to another, confusing past present and future events. Thoughts are connected by free association. All of this techniques are used to increase the sense of realism. Modernism in Europe