James Joyce

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James Joyce

• 1882 - 1941

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From Forster to Joyce
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Edwardian

• A Room With a View was written in Edwardian
  times.
• This means that King Edward was on the throne
  when it was written.
• Great Expectations is Victorian. (Queen Elizabeth
  was on the throne).

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Edwardian

• We can use the word to describe more than just
  who was King or Queen.
• (Edward was only King for 10 years)
• It can refer to the many social and political
  elements that made up life at the very beginning
  of the 20th century.

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Changes

• Life changed very quickly from the beginning of
  the 20th century.
• For example Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a
  View has a lot more freedom than any of the
  female characters in other novels that we have
  studied.

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Style of writing

• James Joyce represents a different sort of
  change.
• His novels do not simply reflect changing
  political and social times, as Forsters did.
• He found a new way to write about them as well.

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James Joyce

• (1882 - 1941)
• Joyce is one of the most important writers of
  20th century.

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Novels

• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
• Ulysses (1922)
• Finnegan's Wake (1939)

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• 1916

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Autobiographical

• Portrait of the Artist is an autobiographical
  novel about growing up in a Catholic family in
  Dublin.
• The central character is called Stephen Dedalus.
• We can call it a bildungsroman as it is a novel
  of development which ends with Stephen losing his
  faith.

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Stephen

• Stephen Dedalus returns as a character in

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Ulysses

• 1922

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Dublin

• Ulysses is an incredibly detailed description of
  people and places in Dublin.
• The central character is a Jewish advertising
  copywriter called Leopold Bloom.

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Blooms Day

• The action in Ulysses takes place all in one day
  - 16th June 1904.
• Because the story is so detailed, fans of the
  book can visit all the places mentioned.
• Every year on this day, people visit Dublin and
  celebrate the novel.
• This day is now called Blooms Day after Leopold
  Bloom.

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One Day

• Each chapter of Ulysses represents about an hour
  of the day.
• It begins around 8am when Leopold Bloom gets up.
• It ends around 2am the following morning.

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Final Chapter

• The end of the novel is a monologue by Leopolds
  wife, Molly.
• She is thinking about meeting her husband as a
  girl and him proposing to her.
• It ends with her saying Yes, I will, Yes.

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Very, very, very difficult

• Ulysses is often thought to be one of the most
  difficult novels to understand that has ever been
  written.
• People spend their whole lives studying all the
  subtle elements of the novel.

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Modernism

• Modernist literature was written particularly
  between 1900 and 1920.
• Ulysses is a very important example of this
  genre.
• A feature of modernist literature is awareness of
  the genres of literature that have come before.

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The Odyssey

• The Odyssey is an ancient Greek poem by Homer.
• It was written some time in the 8th century BC.
• Joyce based the structure of Ulysses upon the
  Odyssey.

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The Odyssey

• Ulysses is divided up into 18 parts which have
  been given names taken from the Odyssey.
• These names have been decided by scholars of
  Ulysses, not Joyce himself.

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Literary Techniques

• Pastiche
• Pastiche is like PARODY, but it does not
  necessarily intend to mock the original.
• In Ulysses Joyce copies existing styles to
  give them new meaning.

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Literary Techniques

• Allusions
• Allusions are references to, or quotes from,
  other literary works.
• There are so many literary allusions is Joyce
  that whole books have been written devoted to
  cataloguing them.

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Literary Techniques

• Stream of Consciousness or interior monologue
• This is an attempt to write in the way that
  people really think.
• It means that normal rules of grammar are
  ignored.

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Molly

• The final chapter of Ulysses is the best example
  of stream of consciousness.
• It is divided into just 8 very long sentences,
  and describes the jumble of thoughts that Molly
  is having as she lies in bed.

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Controversial

• Ulysses was incredibly controversial because of
  its style and its content.
• It has a lot of explicit references to sex, and
  it was banned in the UK until the 30s.

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Leopold

• One of the most famous modern criticisms of
  Ulysses is that Leopold Bloom (if he was real)
  would not be able to understand it.
• This argument says that Joyce is an elitist,
  writing only for a very small number of educated
  people.

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The Dubliners (1914)

• The Dubliners is a collection of short
  stories.
• Like Ulysses it attempts to give an overview
  of Dublin at this time, but it is MUCH easier to
  understand.

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The Dead

• The Dead is the final story in the collection.
• It is longer than the rest and so we can call it
  a NOVELLA.

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The Dead

• The Dead is set at Christmas time.
• People are gathering for a party at the house of
  two elderly sisters.
• The central character is their nephew Gabriel.

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The Dead

• Throughout the story various characters are
  described.
• Very little happens at the party, it is supposed
  to describe a very ordinary event.

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Realisations

• In each of the Dubliners stories, the central
  character realises something very important about
  themselves.
• Gabriel discovers that his wife Gretta was in
  love with someone else before they met.

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Gabriel

• Gabriel is an insecure and slightly pompous man.
• Every year at the Christmas party he carves the
  meat and makes a toast, but he worries constantly
  about getting things wrong.

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Dead

• Throughout the evening, people speak about people
  the have known who have now died.
• Finally, when they return to their hotel, Gretta
  tells Gabriel about the boy she loved who died
  when he was just 17.

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Snow is falling

• Finally, Gabriel sits watching the snow through
  the window.
• This is the most famous part of the story.

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Joyce and Ireland

• Joyce actually lived most of his adult life in
  Europe, though he wrote almost exclusively about
  Dublin.
• He had a difficult relationship with Ireland,
  largely because it was still a very Catholic
  country.

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Catholicism

• The Catholic Church had a huge impact upon
  peoples lives.
• This meant that a lot of private behaviour
  (particularly sex outside of marriage, abortion
  etc) became subject to the rules of the church.
• Joyce found this very oppressive.

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Ireland

• Modern Irish history is very complicated.
• 1904 (the year that Ulysses is set) was a time of
  rising Irish Nationalism.
• In 1919 the Irish War of Independence began.
• Southern Ireland would not become an independent
  until 1922 (coincidentally the year the Ulysses
  was published).

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Next Week

• Around this time (1914 - 1918) World War One was
  fought in Europe.
• Naturally this had a huge impact upon literature
  as well as everything else.
• Go to sandaenglishliterature.wikispaces.com
• to read some War Poetry.