James Joyce (1882-1941)

1. James Joyce (1882-1941) • born in Dublin to an impoverished family • educated by the Jesuits • left Ireland for medical school in Paris at 21 • returned to the continent in 1904 with Nora Barnacle • spent most of his life on the continent (Paris, Italy, Switzerland) in dire poverty • Biographical video (44 mins)

2. Important Works • Dubliners (1914) • Exiles (1914) • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) • Ulysses (1922): considered by some the greatest novel ever written • Finnegan’s Wake (1939)

3. Ireland Story

4. Irish Rebellion • The Easter Rising – after being granted Home Rule in 1914 the Irish were frustrated with the delay in implementation caused by World War I. In 1916 Irish rebels attacked central Dublin in an attempt to overtake the British government. They were defeated and many were executed and imprisoned. • The Republic of Ireland was finally created in 1948 when the Irish Free State became fully independent and several all political ties with the United Kingdom.

5. Joyce and Modernism • Joyce is famous for his use of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing, complex in its style and challenged for explicit content. • His most famous work is Ulysses, a novel recounting a single day in Dublin. The story follows three main characters as well as the city life surrounding them. But it is also a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey. The three main characters represent modern versions of Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope.

6. Joyce’s name is synonymous with modernist literature. • His fiction disrupted conventional expectations: • About narrative certainty, heroism, and religious faith • declining since the late nineteenth century • Offering instead a look at human consciousness in a world where grand cultural myths and systems of belief were breaking down.

7. Joyce substitutes “epiphany” in place of spiritual conviction and certitude, • A momentary flash of awareness, • A heightened personal experience, that revealed the ordinary in an extraordinary light • (What scene from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises showed a similar epiphany?)

8. Epiphany is adapted from Christian doctrine – • The secular equivalent of a spiritual experience. • The description is realistic, with many external details. • The use of realism is mixed with symbolism • The ‘epiphany’ is the sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture or a banal situation – used to lead the character to a sudden self-realization about himself/herself. • (Look for Gabriel Conroy’s realization of his own insignificance, )

9. Narration • Narrative point of view • First-person, third person • Omniscient, limited • Stream of consciousness, interior monologue • Transparent Minds: • Psycho-narration • Narrated monologue (indirect interior monologue) • Quoted monologue (direct interior monologue)

10. Dubliners (1907, pub. 1914) • Stories chronicle stages of life: • childhood • adolescence • maturity • society as a whole

11. Joyce wrote to his publisher: “My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.” • He later stated: “in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country… I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.”

13. A sentence often claimed to be the longest sentence ever written is in Molly Bloom's soliloquy in the James Joyce novel Ulysses (1922), which contains a "sentence" of 3,687 words.[6] However, it is structured as a series of many sentences without punctuation.

14. Famous Quotes “Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.” -Ulysses “He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul.” -”A Little Cloud” “Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” –”The Dead”

15. Paralysis: • a living death, or a succession of deaths, emotional psychological, or spiritual • scenes of darkness, cold night, winter and blinding

16. Epiphany: • a spiritual an intellectual illumination of the nature of a thing • to the artistic insights and means by which such a revelation is achieved • a sudden revelation of spiritual or moral meaning, usually as to the essential being of a person or thing

17. The Dead • Miss Kate, Miss Julia, Mary Jane • Gabriel • scene with Lily • attitude towards other guests • Miss Ivors • the speech and the past • Freddy Malins • Gretta: what does she represent? • Gabriel vs. Michael Furey • Epiphanies -- mirror