James Joyce 1882 1941 His stream of consciousness

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 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? •