Modernism in Literature: James Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica Modernism in Literature: James Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The 20th Century: ‘The Age of Extremes’ The age of speed,fragmentation, anxiety, isolation, alienation,loss of certainty,crises due to the WWs and the new theories and the birth of psychoanalysis introduced by Freud,Einstein and Bergson. It was also the age of the establishment of a new notion of time and space characterised by social unrest (malcontento sociale) and the trauma of two world wars. Key points: Nothing seemed to be right and certain, the world view lost its solidity and even science and religion seemed to lose comfort or security. The key words of the age were isolation, alienation ,anxiety, sterility. There was a lack of any belief that can give meaning to everyday life. The modern artists expressed the impossibility of mastering (padroneggiare) the chaotic universe so their works are characterized by originality, spirit of revolt and experimentation. The realistic conventions of Victorian fiction were not adequate to describe what went on inside the characters’ mind. The writers focused on the inner (interni) events of the mental processes,they broke the traditional time sequence using a complex mixture of past and present, feelings and memories. We assist at the complete destruction of narrative conventions and the narrator disappears. The Interior monologue - the stream of consciousness was used to render through words the spontaneous flow of thoughts and associations the mind produced. Its technique is based on: - Free associations of thoughts in the human mind. - Lack of traditional structure - Lack of narrative sequences - Lack of logical continuity - Fragmentation,narration is fragmented as it follows the characters’ mental processes. Britain after WWI: The modern Welfare State which meant improvements in education and social services,began. In the 1950s British society was characterised by apparent material prosperity but clear-cut class differences remained creating a feeling of disillusionment regarding social equality. Literature and culture: They were characterised by rapid transformations in technology that began to have a real impact on people’s lives in the field of transports,communication and entertainment. Inventions such as the telephone,the telegraph and the radio changed forever the perception of geographical space. Ideas that shook the world: Contrary to Modernism,the Victorian Age was the age of certainty and faith but there were new theories brought forward (portate avanti) by thinkers like Marx that challenged the Victorian belief that social classes were inherited from nature. He also warned about the risk of alienation and class struggle,should the individual be turned into a mere instrument of production. Ideas of time and space were also questioned in these years of change. The french philosopher Bergson argued that in the process of understanding reality, immediate experience and intuition were more significant than rationalism and science. Challenging the traditional idea of time,he also introduced the notion of ‘duration’, which is the individual’s immediate intuition of the continuous flow of reality, an emotional perception in which past,present and future coexist (subjective perception). There is no more linear time. The process of ‘relativisation’ of the experience of reality was taken to extremes by Albert Einstein who introduced his theory of relativity questioning the notions of absolute time and space. Freud most transformed the way individuals were perceived through his theories interpreting human behaviours as dependent on human psyche and characterised by their interior. His ideas influenced the development of modernist fiction and inspired writers to develop new techniques to represent these new perceptions of subjective reality. Main themes of Modernism: The combination of technological innovations and the appearance of new theories in many fields produced a sense of acceleration and fragmentation of life. The modern city is an example of this change and it is also the place where the difficult relationship between the individual and master society emerges. Alienation is a sensation often associated with living in the city as crowded streets can increase one’s sense of not belonging. Therefore several modernists work to deal with alienation in some form. The constant focus on the individual psyche and the subjective experience of reality are two other modernist issues. Finally,also the perception of time,which varies according to the different contexts and personal experience,often appears in Modernist writing. New narrative techniques: Writers’ search was the new narrative techniques that could give expression to a reality which was perceived as chaotic,relative and subjective. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce refined the device of the interior monologue,a way to render through words, the spontaneous flow (flusso) of thoughts and associations the mind produces, which is called stream of consciousness. When traditional novels traced the inner thoughts and feelings of characters,they did so through the voice of the narrator. In contrast, through the technique of the interior monologue, readers ‘hear’ the voice of the characters themselves,while the narrator ‘disappears’. James Joyce He was born into a middle-class Catholic family in Dublin. He attended Jesuit schools and then he studied at University College Dublin where he studied modern letters. He was intolerant to the Catholic religion and the provincial life of Dublin because he thought this city was an obstacle to his artistic development, so he decided to leave it with Nora Barnacle, who became his life-long companion remaining in this self-imposed exile. This exile was necessary not only to give him the unrestricted artistic climate he needed,but also to give him objectivity he needed to write about Ireland with intellectual detachment. Then he went to Paris and returned to Dublin because his mother was dying. After a short stay in Pula,the