James Joyce(vita, opere e testi), Appunti di Inglese

Scarica James Joyce(vita, opere e testi) e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He was the oldest of 10 children and attended Jesuit schools before going on to University College of Dublin. In 1902, after graduating, he went to Paris to study medicine but he soon dedicated himself to writing poems and prose sketches. He met Nora Bernacle a chambermaid in 1904. His first date with Nora was on 16 June 1904 and his most important work “Ulysses” is set on a single day: the day of their date. He persuaded her to leave Ireland and go to Europe with him. They moved to Trieste in 1905 where Joyce met Italo Svevo. Joyce worked as an English teacher at the Berlitz School of Languages. At the beginning of the first World War, Joyce and his family fled to Zurich in neutral Switzerland where he died in 1941. In 1914, at the eve of the WWI, he published Dubliners. His semiautobiographical first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published in 1916 and his masterpiece Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922, after being declared obscene and banned in Britain and America. DUBLINERS Joyce’s short stories were published in a collection of 15 stories called Dubliners in 1914 even if the stories were written before 1907. The work’s aim is to portray the lives of ordinary people in Dublin. The stories are arranged 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 of the characters experience as a result of being tie to antiquated and limited cultural and social traditions. Ireland is paralyzed. This reflected in their relationships in which free expression is inhibited by repressive moral codes so Dubliners can’t fulfil their dreams. Joyce defined Dublin as the centre of paralysis. Stylistically the stories are written in an apparently traditional way but they are characterized by the description of characters’ inner thoughts with the use of indirect interior monologue, the use of symbolism, the absence of a moralising narrative voice without an omniscient narrator. Each story is told from the perspective of a particular character rather than through an omniscient narrator. VICTORIAN NOVELS(DICKENS) VS MODERN NOVELS (JOYCE) -The setting of the Victorian novel where Victorian towns (London) and English countryside. “Ulysses” setting is Dublin instead. -Victorian narrative technique is the third-person narrative and on the contrary in “Ulysses” is used the stream of consciousness technique. -The subject matter in Victorian age is realistic and in “Ulysses” the character’s mind prevailed. -Characters are presented from the outside during Victorian era and are presented from the inside in “Ulysses”. -About language, is concrete in Victorian novel and is a mind language in “Ulysses”. THE DEAD It begins with an after-Christmas dinner party at the house of two old unmarried sisters, Miss Kate and Miss Julia Morkan, who are also the aunts of the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy. Gabriel goes to the party with his wife Gretta and the house becomes a sort of microcosm of contemporary Ireland and its traditions, with each of the guests representing different generations, religious beliefs – they include both Catholic and Protestants – and political tendencies; the different shades of Ireland. Gabriel feels self-confident, especially after a successful speech he makes at the party, and on his way to the hotel, he remembers the best moments of his married life and feels desire for his wife, Gretta. However, he realises that she is crying; at the end of the party, suddenly she had a sad epiphany, a revelation related to her past (epiphany is a sudden revelation triggered by a music or something else). Listening to an old Irish song sung by one of the guests, she suddenly remembered her first true love, Michael Furey, a young man who dies for her. On hearing this desperate and passionate account Gabriel has his own “epiphany”. And when Gretta falls asleep he looks outside the window where the snow is falling. He realises the insignificance of his own life, and of those around him, all of which will fade and die and be forgotten buried by the snow that continues to fall. The sense of well-being generated by the party is seen under a harsh new light. FEATURES AND THEMES ‘The Dead’ can be considered realistic from the way it gives detailed descriptions of people and settings, but at the same time it is also highly symbolic. The names of the characters carry a symbolic meaning: Gabriel, for example, is the name of the protagonist but is also the name of the archangel, or the snow, which symbolises the destiny of every man. Another aspect which foreshadows Joyce’s experimental writings is the way the writer gives us a picture of the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters (stream of consciousness). Gabriel’s final thoughts at the end of ‘The Dead’ are one of Joyce’s first uses of indirect interior monologue. The central event of the story is Gretta’s epiphany, which will lead to Gabriel’s own epiphany at the end. Gretta stops for a moment on the stairs when she hears a song from her past, but in stopping it is as time itself has stopped, or that she has stepped outside of time and returned to her lost youth. This epiphany is reflected through Gabriel’s own gaze as he watches her from the bottom of the stairs. It is an epiphany for him too, in which he sees his wife as a woman he never really knew. The auditory epiphany of Gretta occurs simultaneously with Gabriel’s visual epiphany. In last scene of the story, after Gretta tells the story of Michael Furey, Gabriel looking outside the window at the all-covering snow, reflects on the insignificance of even the most intense moments of existence, which fade like all the rest into oblivion. Modernist writers are very pessimistic. The world has changed after the I World War. “THE DEAD” (text) Gretta has told her husband Gabriel about Michael Furey, who died as a result of his passion for her by remaining outside her house one cold winter night and contracting pneumonia. Exhausted by this painful memory she falls asleep. While Gretta is sleeping, Gabriel is looking at her, listening to her breathing and thinking about her account. He soon realizes that he has played a small part in her life and imagining the intensity of Michael Furey’s passion for Gretta, in comparison his own relationship with his wife has been mediocre and emotionally insipid. His eyes rests upon her face and on her hair and he thinks that in the past her wife was more beautiful than now. He knows that her face is no longer the face for which Michael Furey has risked death. Then, he remembers the dinner, his speech, the wine and dancing, the greetings before leaving and the pleasure of the walk along the rivers in the snow. During the dinner he caught the tired look in his aunt’s face and he realizes that she’s going to die very soon, thinking about the future and imagining the other aunt, Kate, who will tell him how Julia has died. All of this causes him to reflect that it might be better to live a short but emotionally full life than a long and pathetic one, that fades away with age with nothing memorable to look back on. He has never felt that passion towards any woman but he knows that such a feeling must be love. He turns at the window because he hears the snow hitting it. In this text snow is associated with death and dying in several ways. It’s a cold substance which buries and covers, rendering everything equal and indistinguishable. Then its white colour evokes the idea of absence or void but also of purity and infinity. Finally, the snow is a form of oblivion in the way it covers and cancels the shapes of things but at the same time dissolves itself. After Gretta’s account begins Gabriel’s visual epiphany. Looking out of the window he reflects on the insignificance of the most intense moments of existence, which fade like all the rest into oblivion. Joyce uses a symbolic language (snow=death) but also a realistic description (Gretta’s clothes, boots and petticoat). ULYSSES Published in France in 1922. It was banned in U.K and U.S.A because it was considered obscene until 1934-36. It’s a novel and it’s set on one single day (16th June 1904Joyce’s first date with his future