Scarica LETTERATURA INGLESE QUINTO ANNO e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JOYCE LIFE • James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. • 1902: he graduated in Modern Languages. • He was not very interested in free Ireland - > he wanted to increase Ireland's awareness offering a realistic and cosmopolitan portrait of it. • 1904: he fell in love with Nora Barnacle and found work in a language school in Trieste. • 1915: he moved to Zurich with his family. • 1920: he and his wife settled in Paris, where they lived until France was occupied by the Germans in 1940. • He died in Zurich in 1941. WORKS • 1905: Dubliners, a collection of short stories about Dublin, The DEATH was published only in 1914 because of supposedly obscene elements. • 1916: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his semi-autobiographical novel, was published. • 1922: his novel Ulysses was published. • 1939: Finnegans Wake, his last work, a dream sequence written in a dream language A MODERNIST WRITER • He is one of the greatest representatives of Modernism - > for him the artist's task is to render life objectively, through the collection and analysis of the impressions and thoughts caused on a character by an outer event. • Facts presented through different points of view, not through an omniscient narrator. • The portrait of characters is based on introspection (not on description) - > time is perceived as subjective. • Style and language: from the realism of Dubliners - > through the use of free direct speech ~> to the interior monologue with two levels of narration - > to extreme interior monologue (a succession of words without punctuation or grammatical connections). Dubliners Structure • Fifteen short stories about the lives of ordinary people in Dublin -> they disclose human situations and lead to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. • Four groups of stories: childhood, adolescence, maturity, public life. • The last and longest story, The Dead can be considered Joyce's first masterpiece and it is the summary and climax of the whole collection. Themes • The paralysis of Dublin, both physical and moral. -› Characters live as exiles at home, unable to cut the bonds that tie them to their own world. The revelation of paralysis to its victims is the moral centre of Dubliners. The main theme of Dubliners is the failure to find a way out of it. • Escape is the opposite of paralysis: many characters want to escape but none of them succeed. Style • Each story is told from the perspective of a particular character -> the omniscient narrator and the single point of view are rejected. • Use of free direct speech -> the protagonist's thoughts are presented directly. • Varied linguistic register: the language suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters. • Realism is mixed with symbolism -> external details generally have a deeper meaning. Epiphany • This technique refers to a sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a situation, which leads to a revelation. • Dubliners is a sequence of multiple epiphanies -> the revelation of intellectual, moral and spiritual paralysis of the city drives the stories.
