Transcript Document

James. Joyce
(1882-1941)
His stream of consciousness
• He attempted to make a fiction that would
reflect the whole life, conscious and
subconscious, without being limited by
conventions of language.
• Philosophically, he came to feel that time
and space are artificial, that all is related,
and that art should be a symbol of that
relationship.
• Psychologically he is for ever attempting to
re-seek unity in a world that is
disorganized
His works
• Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916),
Ulysses (1922), Finnegan’s Wake
(1939
Ulysses
•
Instead of the wanderings of Homer’s
Ulysses/Odysses over the geographical
world, Joyce shows the mental
wanderings of a character in Dublin for the
space of about 20 hours.
Ulysses
• This formless, plotless novel records the
thoughts, shades and fleeting flashes of
the mind, suggestions etc., as they rise,
and is written in a great variety of styles, to
correspond with the mood of the moment,
ranging from the simplest to the highly
poetical, from the vulgar to the beautiful.
Ulysses
• On the whole, the book is written in
ordinary English which makes sense line
by line, yet different interpretations if put
together.
Ulysses
• His actions: complete sentences in past
tense/His mind: incomplete sentences in
any tenses; economy of punctuation;
ellipsis of words.
Ulysses
• 1.Leopold Bloom (modern Ulysses),
middle-aged Irish Jew, a businessman, he
is an “Everyman”, symbolic of universal
human experience.
• 2.Molly Bloom, Leopold’s unfaithful wife,
represents the earthy forces of life and
reproduction.
• 3. Stephen Dedalus, a dedicated writer
like Joyce.
Dubliners
• A collection of 15 short stories; “to
write a chapter of the moral history of
my country…under 4 of its aspets:
childhood, adolescence, maturity and
public life”
Dubliners
• My “dear dirty Dublin”, the city’s paralysis,
moral, political, and spiritual;
• frustration or defeat of the soul
Dubliners
• Epiphany(顿悟）: a sudden revelation of
truth about life inspired by a seemingly
trivial incident
Questions for “Araby”-a short story
• Joyce often uses realistic details with symbolic
overtones.
• Three specific places are described in detail: the
street, the house and the market. In addition, the
weather is frequently noted.
• 1.How would you characterize these elements of
setting? How effectively do the adjectives help to
create an atmosphere?
Qestions for “Araby”
• 2. How might the bazaar, Araby, be
considered symbolically in the story?
• 3.What does Araby symbolize for the
protagonist before he gets there?
• 4. What does it come to symbolize at the
close of the story?
• 5.To what extent does this symbol embody
the story’s central idea?
•