James Joyce: Dublin's Literary Hero and His Masterpieces, Appunti di Cultura Inglese I

Scarica James Joyce: Dublin's Literary Hero and His Masterpieces e più Appunti in PDF di Cultura Inglese I solo su Docsity! JAMES JOYCE 1882-1941 Born InDublin, studied at University College, Dublin. He found the Irish literary movement too parochial for his taste. Language, religion and nationality were seen by him as nets cast at his soul, and so he escaped to Paris in 1902 to study medicine only to return the following year to attend his mother in her final illness. In 1904 he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle and thecouple left DublininOctober tospendthe rest of their life ontheContinent. Joyce believed in the impersonality of the artist, whose work did not have to express his point of view. That's why he used different points of view and narrative techniques appropriated to the several characters portrayed.  1914: DUBLINERS Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories all about Dublin life, dealing with the ordinary life of ordinary people in a highly symbolic way. The focus is on small details, but they are crucial ones, revealing some hidden truth. So they form a realistic and highly suggestive portrait of the lives of ordinary people in Dublin. Each story reveals a deeper truth lying beyond the usual aspect of life. THEME: The main theme underlying them is that of paralysis: the inhabitants of Dublin are victims of a spiritual paralysis which limits their lives and renders them incapable of making decisions and so live fully. Joyce once defined Dublin "the centre of paralysis". The stories are arranged into four groups that correspond to four 'phases' of life: childhood, adolescence, mature life and public life. Each story deals with a character who represents one of these categories and portrays either a failure or a defeat of the character. This cyclic order reinforces the idea of the pervasive frustration of living in the city. Dubliners either accept their condition of paralysis because they are not aware of it (The two sisters) or they lack the courage to break the chains (Eveline). They are spiritually weak and fearful people, slaves of their familiar, moral cultural, political and religious life. The centre of the tales is not paralysis but its revelation to its victims in a sort of painful self-awareness (The boy or Conray) LANGUAGEAND STYLE: They are written in an apparently traditional way, the description is naturalistic and detailed. But at the same time the language is highly symbolical since external details generally have a deeper meaning. In particular Joyce introduces here the technique of the epiphany that is "a sudden spiritual manifestation". It indicates that moment when a simple object, a trivial fact, a petty detail suddenly allows the protagonists to realise his/her (usually miserable) condition and thus experience a deep level of self-awareness. Epiphany means "manifestation, showing" as in the showing of the Christ to the Magi. Each story is told from the perspective of a character in the form of free direct speech or thought. Joyce's works open in medias res with the analysis of a particular moment, the portrait of a character based on introspection rather than on description.  1916: A PORTRAITOF THEARTIST AS A YOUNGMAN A partly autobiographical novel. Stephen Daedalus (Stephen like the first Christian martyr, Daedalus like the first craftsman, the mythical builder of the labyrinth - in which S. was to find himself in the form of the bigotry and moral atmosphere of Dublin - and who flies away on wings he had made) is portrayed in his development from childhood to early manhood, in his struggle to reach spiritual, emotional and artistic maturity. The novel explores the experience of growing up and of inner conflict by depicting Stephen's progressive detachment from his family and from his country and his realisation of his role as an artist. In the end, fully aware of his destiny as a poet, he realizes that only exile away from Dublin and Ireland will allow him to grow and fulfil his ambitions.  1922: ULYSSES, published in Paris 16th June1904 (the day J. met his wife-to-be) It caused a great scandal both for its technical innovations and for its explicit language. Banned for a long time in England and the USA (first English edition 1936).The basic idea of U, a day in the life of an inhabitant of Dublin, represents the attempt to present a character more completely than ever before, giving his life in immerse detail. Joyce uses the myth to give his own modern story a universal dimension. CHARACTERS: Leopold Bloom: an unsuccessful middle-aged married man. A Dubliner of Jewish origin who works as an advertising agent. He is the U of the title, and wanders about the streets of Dublin just as Homer's Ulysses wandered about the Mediterranean. What happens to him is, however, far less heroic; it is, in fact quite banal and common. Stephen Dedalus: a sensitive young man with literary ambitions who feels frustrated by Irish provincial life. He is the central character of the first part of the novel. At the beginning of it, he is sent away from his home and is going about Dublin in search of a house. Homeless and fatherless, he corresponds to Homer's Telemachus. Molly Bloom: the central character of the last part. She corresponds to Penelope, but unlike her, she is not faithful to her husband (she has a lover, Blazes Boylan, her concert manager). THEME: U. is seen as the prototype of all wanderers, the complete man: son, husband and father; victim and hero, brave and cunning. Bloom is the modern equivalent of the Greek hero. An anti-hero, according to T.S.Eliot, J's use of this heroic myth is a constant reminder of the decadence of our modern age. Bloom's day is projected against the story of Ulysses, and each section of the novel corresponds to a specific episode of the Odyssey. The first part of the book deals with Dedalus, who has come home from Paris (where we left him in the Portrait of the Artist as a Y oung Man). Just like Telemachus, Ul.'s son, he sets off to find his friend, his spiritual father Bloom, who in turn, is in search of a "spiritual son". When the two meet, Bloom, "adopts" Dedalus and at the end of their wanderings through Dublin offers to take him home and give him shelter. EPICMETHOD: Ulysses' story is taken to represent allegorically the journey of every man through life. Joyce uses the epic model to stress the lack of heroism, of ideals, of love and trust in the modern world. The epic structure thus become a mirror in which to reflect the modern waste land. His technique reflects the chaos of life and human perception and myth is the unifying element which helps to find coherence in the chaos. J. deliberately and systematically pursues universality at multiple levels in the novel. All the episodes are not only associated with specific parts of the Odyssey but they are associated with all aspects of human experience (eg. art/human organ/colour/symbol/technique, etc). So that the work becomes a vast compendium of the physical world, the biological world and man's cultural history, learning and art. STRUCTURE: Ulysses is clearly modelled on the Odyssey. The novel's 18 episodes correspond to the same number of incidents in Homer. So it is conceived as a parallel to the Odyssey, often in a mock heroic tone. The novel is divided into three parts in imitation of the three parts of the Odyssey: Telemachiad (1-3) - Odyssey (4-15) - Nostos (16-18). In the first Telemachus sets out to find his missing father; in the second Ulysses travels seeking home; in the third, son finds father and father finds son, home, and, after eliminating the suitor, wife. The epic is played against the modern in a variety of ways, eg.:  In the first episode, called Telemachus Stephen is evicted from his home, a Martello tower on the coast, by his housemates, who mock him and deprived him of his rights, just as Ulysses' son is deprived of his father's protection, and finally forced to leave his home, where his mother's suitors bully him and want to kill him.  The second episodes is called Nestor. Stephen teaches a history class at a boys' school and gets some good advice from the schoolmaster, Mr Deasy, who is the counterpart of Nestor, the Greek king renowned for his wisdom who gives Telemachus excellent advice.  In the episode called Hades Bloom goes to a funeral at Dublin's cemetery and thinks about the dead people he has known, which is a reference to Ulysses' descent to the underworld where he speaks with the souls of great dead heroes.  In the Circe episode, Bloom and Stephen meet at a brothel. Just as Ulysses' companions are turned into swine by the witch Circe, so the two modern day heroes almost lose themselves in the house of pleasure. Bella Cohen, the owner of the place, is a grotesque version of the mythical Circe. TECHNIQUEANDSTYLE/S: To convey the life of an individual in a single day, and in the absence of a dramatic plot, J. chose to give the minutest details of that day and especially the character's process of thinking. The technical innovation, as in V.Woolf's novels, was the adoption of the stream of consciousness. The uninterrupted (an unpunctuated) flow of thoughts, as they first come to a person's mind, before they are organised, logically and syntactically, by reason. Ulysses, though, is not all written using the interior monologue. J. displays the greatest variety of styles, at least one for each of the 18 chapters. We have sections which are written in language that recalls the Anglo-Saxon and Middle English alliterative style, rich in compound words, others which reproduce the language of Romantic novels or melodrama. A variety of genres too are used: in the "Circe" episode J. employs dramatic dialogue; other parts read like newspapers reports.  1939 FINNEGAN'S WAKE It's J's most difficult work. It is the story of one night, presenting the unconscious life and the sleeping mind of a pubkeeper H.C. Earwicker. And his wifeAnna. Their experiences become a complete summary of human history and psychology. It took Joyce 17 years to write it. No syntax survives and the lexicon is partly invented, partly English and partly taken from at least 12 different European languages and dialects. Time, sequence, structure and narration have disappeared in this novel. It contains so many puns and such complex words, having so may possible meanings, that the final result is a sort of puzzle.