Scarica ULYSSES, DI JAMES JOYCE e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! ULYSSES – written in 1922, but published in 1934 in the USA in 1936 in the UK SETTING IN PLACE The novel takes place on a single day, Thursday 16th June 1904. l which was special to Joyce because it was the first date with Nora Barnacle PLOT It is the story of LEOPOLD BLOOM, a middle-aged Jewish advertising salesman, who gets up, goes out one morning, leaving his wife MOLLY asleep in bed, and wanders around Dublin on a series of inconclusive errands during which he meets the young writer STEPHEN DEDALUS. An indigent and pretentious young man, Evicted from his house, in search of a new house and a father. So he will become momentarily Leopold’s adopted son a sensual singer , who has several lovers A PARALLEL WITH THE “ODYSSEY” = Mithical Method As the title suggests, the novel is related to Homer’s great epic “Odyssey”-- the tale of Ulysses, the Greek soldier whose ship is blown off course. He faces bizarre and dangerous events but eventually he manages to return to his Itaca This epic is used as a structural frame: Joyce wanted to show how the conflicts, triumphs of the classical world are the same problems faced by the modern man. The difference is that modern ordinary man is imperfect, he is not a hero, he can’t rely on gods to help him through his struggles. Yet, the ordinariness of Joyce’s characters shows depth and vitality. It’s “a detailed account of ordinary life on an ordinary Dublin day” : Joyce planned each movement of each character on each street, as though he were playing chess; he placed them in houses he knew drinking in pubs he had frequented walking on cobblestones he had retraced (percorso) That’s why he achieved a new form of realism: he represented human nature Leopold symbol of the whole mankind Molly symbol of flesh, sensuality, fecundity Stephen symbol of pure intellect, seeking maturity The theme is moral: human life means “suffering, falling and struggling to rise and seek the good” . STRUCTURE & STYLE The novel is divided into 3 parts ( Telemachiad, Odyssey, Nostos) and in 18 episodes. Each chapter is organized around a different hour a colour a symbol a revolutionary prose a narrative technique, suitable for the subject l Joyce combined different methods: the cinematic technique (close-ups, flashbacks, tracking-shoots / carrellata) the interior monologue with 2 levels of narration one external to the ch’s mind one internal with the ch’s thoughts fowing freely regular sentences -irregular sentences with the conventional -lack of subject+verb use of grammar -with only one word The language used is rich in: puns symbols images contrasts/paradoxes interruptions the register is full of : slang catchphrases nicknames expression taken from advertising used to give voice to the foreign words unspoken activity of the literary quotations mind allusions to other texts
