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JOYCE
Life James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the eldest surviving child of ten children, four boys and six girls. He was largely educated at Jesuit schools , but later he’ll reject his education, before finally enrolling at University College, Dublin, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on foreign languages in 1902.
Politically and literally movements which had as their objective the freeing of Ireland from English dominance held very little attraction for him. His interest was for a broader European cultur e, and this led him to think of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. He had a European cosmopolitan viewpoint , in fact he left Ireland and moved first to Paris and then to Trieste to teach English, in Trieste he was Svevo’s English teacher and influenced him in his writing career. (Thanks to their friendship, Svevo will write “Senilitá” and “La coscienza di Zeno”)
He left Ireland because he wanted to judge Irish and Dubliners with detachment. Therefore, Joyce rejected the Irish question , while his father accepted it, and he considered Irish too provincial and too attached to their traditions. He also rejected the Irish revival , a movement led by William Butler Yeats ; the authors of this movement wanted to write Irish works and to represent them in Irish theatres by Irish actors. In particular, they had a theatre in Dublin, the Abbey theatre , that was later destroyed by the war; it was rebuilt and today it’s called “ The Peacock ”.
In June 1904 he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle , a 20-year-old girl who was working as a chambermaid in a hotel. They had their first date on 16th June , which was to become the Bloom’s day of Ulysses. In 1915 Joyce moved to Zurich together with his family, since his position as a British national in Austrian-occupied Trieste left him no alternative. The final decade of his life was marked by his daughter’s illness and his increasing blindness. He died in January 1941 and was buried in Zurich.
His career can be divided into two periods :
- In the first period he followed naturalism in his way of writing and he used everyday language.
- In the second period he followed modernism.
Dubliners The most important work of this period is “ Dubliners ” , a collection of 14 short stories arranged to the stage of human life : childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. Beside the stores there is also an epilogue titled “ The dead ” ; it refers to the inhabitants of Dublin who are dead inside , from a moral point of view. For Joyce Dublin is the centre of human paralysis because Dubliners and Irish people in general are too attached to their traditions, too provincial, whereas he considered himself as a European, different from Dubliners. (For this reason he left Dublin and went first to Paris and then to Trieste, in Italy, because he wanted to judge Irish and Dubliners with detachment. In Trieste he met Italo Svevo; in particular, Joyce was Svevo’s English teacher at the Berlitz School and influenced him in his writing career.)
In Dubliners Joyce adopts the so-called epiphany. From a religious point of view epiphany is the moment when the magi meet baby Jesus and it takes place on 6th January. For Joyce's epiphany it’s a sudden spiritual revelation : it’s the moment when things appear under a different light, it can be caused by an object, a word or a gesture. However, his characters take consciousness of their conditions but do nothing to change it. (Esempio epiphany di Gabriel in Dubliners, vedi testo. )
Modernism In the second period he followed modernism. The 1910 is important in the history of the English novel because it marked the birth of Modernism in England. Artists weren’t interested in the external reality , they focused their attention on the mental processes of the human mind. Modernism was influenced by three philosophers: Bergson, William James and Freud.
- For Bergson time is not made of separate moments, it’s a continuous flux. Present, past and future coexist at the same time.
- For William James our thoughts flow like a river (there is no punctuation).
- Freud discovered the existence of the so-called Subconscious. We explain it with the metaphor of the iceberg , the emerged part is our conscience which we are aware of, the submerged part is our subconscious. To discover this Freud used hypnosis. Our subconscious reveals during our dreams. It’s impossible to find the meaning of our dreams because they are very symbolic. Our subconscious is made up of those things we don’t accept consciously.
The authors of this period try to reproduce on paper the flux of thoughts ; this type of novel is called “the stream of consciousness novel”. It was difficult to read and understand because they used interior monologue, flashbacks, lack of punctuation and no use of capital letters; also in this type of novels there is no plot and every thought is connected by the association of ideas. Virginia Woolf and Joyce started this type of novel and both of them used the interior monologue but with some differences. Virginia Woolf’s interior monologues are preceded by expressions such as “ he said” or “ he thought” and are easy to read. Joyce used the direct interior monologue so it was difficult to read: it’s hard to establish what is going on or who is thinking. Each chapter of Ulysses has a parallel with an episode in the Odyssey. Leopold Bloom represents the modern man in general. Present, past and future coexist at the same time.
Ulysses In the second period Joyce also invented some words. The most important work of this period is Ulysses. In Ulysses there are three main characters: Leopold Bloom , a sales agent; Molly Bloom , Leopold’s wife; Stephen Daedalus , who is Joyce’s alter ego, he is an artist who preaches the importance of art to Dubliners, at some point he quarrels with his family and he is sent away, then he meets Leopold by chance who choose to adopt him (but he’s not their real child, the couple doesn’t have children). The book is made up of 18 chapters and each chapter is has a parallel with an episode of the Odyssey , in fact Leopold is supposed to be Ulysses , Molly is supposed to be Penelope but, unlike Penelope, she is not faithful and Steven is supposed to be Telemacus. So Joyce uses the mythical method. Also, Leopold represents the crisis of the modern man. The story takes place in one day, on 16 June 1904 , which was an important date for Joyce since it was the day of the first date with his wife.
Beckett’s couple Beckett’s characters are complementary characters (one is optimistic, the other is pessimistic; one sleeps, the other can’t sleep; one speaks, the other can’t speak) : they quarrel but they can’t separate because they depend on each other. These characters are known as Beckett's couple. Some examples are:
- Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot”.
- The old man and his servant in “Endgame” : the first can’t move from his wheelchair while the other is not capable of sitting.
- Krapp and his tapes in “ Krapp’s last tapes” where Krapp doesn't recognise himself in the tapes because, according to Beckett, the aspirations that we had yesterday are different from the aspirations that we have today.
- The wife and the husband in “Happy days”.
Waiting for Godot In waiting for Godot there is no setting , but a desolate country road and a bare tree. The main characters are Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) and they are waiting for a mysterious Mr Godot. A boy arrives and informs them that Mr Godot can't come that day and he will come the next day. However, the next day the same situation repeats.
There are other two characters: Pozzo and Lucky. Pozzo is the master while Lucky is the servant and they depend on each other because Pozzo is rich and Lucky to eat depends on Pozzo. Lucky and Pozzo are physically linked by a rope. Pozzo always thinks about eating and then throws the bones to Lucky. Pozzo might represent capitalism while Lucky represents the submission of the proletariat. For some people, Estragon and Pozzo stand for the body , while Lucky and Vladimir represent the intellect.
The tree in the second act has got some leaves and for some critics this is a symbol of optimism but it isn't true. In fact, the tree is used by Vladimir and Estragon to attempt suicide without success. Then, in the third act , Pozzo goes blind while Lucky can't speak. Despite those little changes, there is no development in time , only a repetitive meaningless present. In fact the structure is circular : it ends almost exactly as it begins
Also there are no characters in the traditional sense. The two protagonists, Vladimir and Estragon, are two human beings concerned with questions about the nature of the self, the world and God. Also, to be conscious of their existence, they call each other continuously with their nicknames (Didi, Gogo). They have problems of identity : when the boy comes back to say that Godot isn't there that day, he doesn't recognise them. That's because the aspirations that we had yesterday are different from the ones that we have today.
Godot might be God since the description given by the boy, to when Estragon and Vladimir ask what Godot looks like, (a man with white long hair and beard) is similar to the image of God and the name is similar to God plus a suffix (t), however Beckett doesn't believe in God so, probably, Godot represents death and Estragon and Vladimir are, in reality, waiting to die: they play, quarrel, attempt suicide to spend their time.
