JAMES JOYCE

One of the greatest modernist world writers

An extraordinary talent

• With an international cultural background

He was in love with words. He was great at employing

the stream of consciousness technique He wanted to express the stream of consciousness

happening in our minds with no time mediation or

punctuation

He was an innovator with

languageInterior monologue

Free direct and indirect speech Lack of punctuation

Stream of consciousness technique

Content is not so relevant

Dubliners

• It is a collection of 15 stories corresponding to different stages of human life

• He moved within the realm of the realistic tradition but soon he moved away towards a more allusive symbolic narration

Dubliners

• Paralysis is the central motif connecting all different characters: it's a spiritual one.

• Strictly connected to paralysis there is escape: all characters want to leave, to change but they fail, because they are unable to break the chains which tie them to family, past, tradition

Dubliners

• Only when they experience epiphany they acquire awareness of their paralysis and their impossibility of finding a way out

• So epiphany is a sort of characters' sudden realization triggered by everyday common objects

ULYSSES An allusive reference to the

classical hero and Homeric work

Ulysses

• It is centered on a single day in the life of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly and his friend Stephen Dedalus: all names have a symbolic meaning, both religious and classical references.

• The book describes the wanderings of the main protagonist into his home town, Dublin, echoing the ones of the classical Ulysses in twenty years.

• Leopold is a common anti-hero fighting against a various heterogeneous outer world

• Stephen Dedalus represents an artist, he is the protagonist of another novel written by Joyce, The portrait of the artist as a young man

• He represents Telemachus, the son of Ulysses

Failure more than paralysis is the main theme

• Molly's monologue closing the book is really famous with 'yes' appealing to a sexual intercourse but also acceptance in general.

• She represents a modern Penelope but she is not faithful as the classical character

Other recurring themes are lack of values, past nostalgia, despair, fear for future, appearance versus reality, emptiness