Scarica La vita e le opere di James Joyce e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) LIFE - He was educated in Jesuit schools in Dublin and went to University College, where he graduated in modern languages. - He had no interest in movements for Irish independence but was interested in European culture and considered himself a European rather than an Irishman. - He left Dublin when he was 22: he spent some time in Paris, then back in Ireland he met Nora Barnacle and went to live with her in Italy, Trieste, where he worked as an English teacher. He became friends with Italo Svevo. - With Nora Barnacle he had two children, Giorgio and Lucia. They finally got married in 1931. - He had financial problems while living in Trieste. Some of his works were considered obscene and published many years after they were written. He left Trieste because of the war and moved to Switzerland, where he died in 1941. MAIN WORKS - He first published a collection of poems: Chamber Music (1907) - Dubliners, a collection of short stories, was written in 1905 but published only in 1914. - 1916: A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a semi-autobiographical novel. - Ulysses, a novel published in Paris in 1922 - 1939: the novel Finnegans Wake. NATURALISM - Joyce’s early fiction is Naturalist in style - Naturalism is an extension of Realism, evolutionary and deterministic theories lie at its base - The fictional world is described with detachment and scientific objectivity - People’s lives seem conditioned by the environment and by fate THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF JOYCE’S WORKS - Although Joyce chose to leave Ireland, it is the setting of most of his works, especially Dublin, seen from the point of view of a European, not of an Irishman. - He wanted to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people - The lives of ordinary Dubliners represent in general man’s mental, emotional and biological reality. Isolation and detachment of the artist from society. ↪︎ His task → to render life objectively. So he used different points of view and narrative techniques. ↪︎ Greater importance given to the inner world of the characters ↪︎ Time → perceived as subjective. THE EVOLUTION OF JOYCE’S STYLE Dubliners (1914) was characterized by: - Realism - Disciplined prose - Different points of view - Free-direct speech - Epiphany - Mixture of symbolism and realism In his later works (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake) he gradually developped more experimental techniques such as: - interior monologue with two levels of narration - extreme interior monologue (without punctuation) 1 DUBLINERS - Published in 1914 in the newspaper The Irish Homestead by Joyce with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus. - Dubliners are described as afflicted people, slaves of their religious, political and cultural habits and of their narrow-mindedness. - All the 15 short stories are set in Dublin → “The city seemed to me the centre of paralysis,” Joyce stated. They don’t focus an action, but on moments of intensity (“epiphanies”), and lead to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. STRUCTURE AND STYLE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND THEMES - Joyce uses realistic, concise, detailed descriptions. - But his realism is combined with symbolism → double meaning of details. - He wants to take the reader beyond the surface of reality and he does it by using the technique of the epiphany → “the sudden spiritual manifestation” of an interior reality. EPIPHANY Joyce’s aim → to take the reader beyond the usual aspects of life through epiphany. ↪︎ It is the special moment in which a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation or an episode lead the character to a sudden self-realisation about himself / herself or about the reality surrounding him / her. ↪︎ Understanding the epiphany in each story is the key to the story itself. The epiphany is a moment of revelation both for the reader and the character. PARALYSIS The main theme of Dubliners → paralysis. ↪︎ Physical paralysis caused by external forces ↪︎ Moral paralysis linked to religion, politics and culture The climax of the stories → the coming to awareness by the characters of their own paralysis. Alternative to paralysis → escape which always leads to failure. 2
