Ulysses by James Joyce, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Ulysses by James Joyce e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Ulysses by James Joyce The title of the novel, Ulysses, is the latinised name of Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey. The story is set in Dublin and it developed entirely on the 16th June 1904, a date passed down history as Bloom’s day, the protagonist of the novel. Also, this very day, the 16th June 1904 is the day Joyce met his wife, Nora Barnacle. This novel establishes a series of parallels with Homer’s odyssey, as we already seen for the tite: JOYCE’S ULYSSES HOMER’S ODYSSEY Leopold Bloom, the protagonist Ulysses, the protagonist Molly Bloom, leopold’s wife Penelope, Ulysses’s wife Stephen Dedalus, a lone man in the world that Bloom kind of adopts Telemachus, Ulysses’s son Plot Stephen Dedalus: is a young intellectual who is rejected by his friends and co-workers. He wanders alone through Dublin and meets Leopold, “who adopts” him and takes him home. Leopold Bloom: wakes up early, cooks his and his wife’s breakfast, leaves home to work, goes to a funeral, meets his friends, has a romantic feeling for a woman he meets, Circe, is jealous of his wife. Eventually, he goes back home with Stephan. Molly Bloom: she thinks about her husband, she is sure that he’s betraying her. She has a romantic encounter with her music teacher (she is an opera singer). The last chapter: it developed in Molly’s mind. Her stream of consciousness as she lies in bed half-asleep is reported to the reader. Time Joyce focuses on the characters’ stream of thoughts and consciousness. ● The stream of thoughts implies that the reference to the external reality is interrupted to give voice to the characters’ flux of thoughts. ● The stream of consciousness, mainly used in the last chapter, implies that the external reality exists only based on Molly’s perceptions. Style The stream of consciousness is the psychic phenomenon that Joyce captures in his novel, however, the technique used in order to do that is the interior monologue technique. The interior monologue technique is characterized by two levels of narration: one external to the character’s mind, the other internal. For example in J. Joyce’s Ulysses, Molly’s monologue: this is an example of interior monologue with the mind level of narration. Molly Bloom lies in bed thinking over her day, various scenes from her past life crowd into her mind. She thinks of her husband, Leopold Bloom, in particular. The interior monologue technique is a stylistic revolution that implies no use of grammar, syntax and punctuation. Also, thoughts are not connected in a linear or logical way but through free association and external reality and action are less important than the characters’ inner reality (the situations are quite common and banal, but they acquire relevance for what they produce in the characters’ mind). Mythical method According to T. S. Eliot, in his Ulysses, Joyce used the mythical method rather than the narrative method. The mythical method allows the author to give order, shape and meaning to a present reality marked by chaos, fragmentation and loss of values. The age of Modernism is characterized by a deep crisis which had invested all the values which traditionally guided the lives of the white man. The traditional function of the artist was that of providing models of interpretation of reality. Joyce and Eliot identified such models in the myths, because of their universal and eternal nature. In making parallels between the present, embodied by Leopold Bloom, and a mythical past, represented by the Odyssey with its values and heroes, Joyce conveys a cross-temporal dimension to his story making his characters representatives of eternal values. Even though the protagonists seem to be morally inferior to their corresponding characters in the Odyssey, their suffering, but also their struggling to rise and seek the good, show that the circumstances have changed, but the human quest continues over and over unchanged. In such a comparison, the futility and chaos of present times acquires meaning and order. The last chapter, Penelope The last chapter, ‘Penelope’, consists of eight unpunctuated paragraphs reporting Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness. it is important for: ● the use of stream of consciousness technique ● the choice to address the last and most important part of the novel not to a man, as in the Odyssey, but to a woman. SUMMARY Bloom and Stephen’s wonderings have come to an end. Safe at home again, Bloom is in bed asleep beside his wife, Molly, who lies awake reflecting on her past and present. The scent of flowers in Molly’s room originates her rumination. She thinks about beautiful mountain landscapes, she reflects on the origin of the creation, she thinks about her being compared to a mountain flower and this makes her think about her sensuality which she used to convince her husband to propose. STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS The technique Joyce adopts to represent her thoughts is the most complete experiment in Ulysses of the internal monologue method. The impression of the stream is conveyed by