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James Joyce Life and works 1882: born in Dublin, the eldest surviving child of ten children 1888-1898: educated by the Jesuits he received a strict education 1899: studied Modern Languages at University College, Dublin grew up as a rebel among rebels: he rejected both the strict religious morality of the Catholic Church and the exaggerated Irish nationalism in contrast with Yeats and the other literary contemporaries who tried to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity his interest was for a broader European culture: he saw himself as a European rather than an Irishman 1903: aged 21 he left Ireland and spent some time in Paris 1904: he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a twenty-year-old girl who was working as a chambermaid in a hotel 16 June 1904 : first date with Nora (BLOOMSDAY) 1905: settled in Trieste with Nora Barnacle; here he made friends with Italo Svevo and started teaching Italian 1905-1907: his two children, Giorgio and Lucia, were born. 1914: Dubliners (a collection of 15 short stories already completed in 1905) was published 1915: Joyce moved to Zurich together with his family, since his position in Austrian - occupied Trieste left him no alternative 1916: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his semi-autobiographical novel, was published 1918: Ulysses began to appear in serial form in The Little Review 1920: moved to Paris 1922: Ulysses was published in Paris; it drew both praise and sharp criticism 1934: published in the USA, 1937 in Britain, 1966 in Ireland 1939: Finnegans Wake was published 1940: the Joyces returned to Zurich 1941: he died at the age of 59 he is buried in Zurich Main features of Joyce’s works time: perceived as subjective greater importance given to the inner world of the characters his task: to render life objectively; reality explored from different points of view simultaneously detachment of the artist (impersonality of the artist) The evolution of Joyce’s style disciplined prose, apparently written in a traditional way: - different points of view and time shifts (no omniscient narrator, no chronological order) - mixture of realism and symbolism (detailed descriptions; external details have a deeper meaning) - free direct speech and free direct-thought (no reporting verbs) - each story opens in medias res - portrait of the character based on introspection rather than description - Dubliners 1914 revolutionary prose: - different points of view and time shifts - interior monologue (disjunctive syntax, incomplete sentences, puns, no real punctuation etc..) - the reader is into the mind of the characters - great importance given to the sound of words - Ulysses 1922 extremely revolutionary prose: - extreme interior monologue (he remoulded language itself) - he called this work ‘A tower of Babel’ (he mixed together more than 40 languages) - some parts are unreadable - Finnegans Wake 1939 Dubliners (1914) the setting of most of Joyce’s works is Ireland, especially Dublin he wanted to give a mental, objective and realistic portrait of Dublin ordinary life (through the eyes of the characters – no omniscient narrator) he elevated the details of ordinary life to a universal dimension (grandeur of ordinary life) Dublin as the centre of paralysis: he thought that religion (most of all) and politics had taken possession of the Irish minds Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century collection of 15 short stories published in 1914 in the newspaper The Irish Homestead by Joyce with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus all the stories are set in Dublin: “‘My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis’, Joyce stated the 15 stories, though set in the same city, are not united by their geography: each story has a singular location structure: arranged in four groups: “I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The stories are arranged in this order” - childhood: The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby - adolescence: Eveline, After the race, Two gallants, The boarding house - mature life: A little cloud, Counterparts, Clay, A painful case - public life: Ivy day in the committee room, A mother, Grace, The dead all the stories have the same structure: paralysis - epiphany - escape - failure main theme of Dubliners = paralysis and the failure to find a way out of it - physical paralysis: caused by external forces - moral paralysis linked to religion, politics and culture the epiphany: Joyce’s aim is to take the reader beyond the surface of reality through the epiphany a special moment: a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation lead the character to a sudden manifestation/revelation of a truth (about himself / herself or about the reality) understanding the epiphany in each story is the key to the story itself the climax of the stories = the awareness of the characters of their own paralysis alternative to paralysis = escape which always leads to failure because the characters are morally weak The Dead: the last short story of the collection it can be considered Joyce’s first masterpiece and anticipates his path towards the novel Joyce made use of the first time of the interior monologue characters: Gabriel Conroy, an embodiment of Joyce himself, and Gretta, his wife.
