James Joyce: Ulysses

The new society is unable to have heroes with values: the new Ulysses is a normal man. Molly is the new Penelope but isn't like her: is unfaithful with her husband. The various part of the city (Dublin) are referred to the steps of the trip of Ulysses. Stephen Dedalus the protagonist of the autobiography made by Joyce represent in this novel Telemaco, the son of Ulysses.

Use of Stream of Consciousness as the main technique of Joyce: the last 40 pages are a unique stream of consciousness of Molly. The outside is narrated with the third person, the inside with stream of consciousness.

Parallelism between past and present: contemporary society is a decline in modern society (Joyce wrote this after the First World War). Joyce has used the Myth to give a view of the contemporary society: give order and sense. In Ulysses the creation of words, the rythm, the sounds are very important in the composition of the novel. It's written in prose fiction but in some parts there are poethical passages with rhyme schemes and specific sounds.

James Joyce: Dubliners

It isn't an experimental work; nothing really sensational is narrated; the stories are small normal events which talk about life and its problems in Dublin. The structure is different from classic short stories: beginning in mediastress and often with a open-ending conclusion. Joyce tries to record the emotions and feelings of the characters that are conditioned by the landscape of the city. Past, present and future are often mixed. Joyce is very careful with the means of words, use of symbols, figurative language: in some part his novel is more like a poem than prose fiction. Joyce type of writing is very difficult to read and sell.
After Dubliners he wrote "The portrait of the artist as a young man" an autobiographical enteriour monologue. With Ulysses Joyce reaches his peak; but he encountered many difficulties in publish his works. Ulysses was published in England only 15 years after the first publication in Paris. This happened because the novel content was considered scandalous.

Traduzione da: "La storia di Iqbal" di Francesco D'Adamo

Italiano

"La casa di Hussain Khan, il padrone, si trovava alla periferia di Lahore, tra la polvere e la campagna bruciata dove pascolavano le greggi scese dal Nord. Era una casa grande, metà in muratura e metà in lamiera, con un cosrtie centrale sporco e disselciato, dove c'erano un pozzo, il suo vecchio furgoncino Toyota, la tettoia di canne che riparava le balle di lana e di cotone e in fondo, seminascosta dai rovi e dalle erbe selvatiche, la porta di ferro arrugginito che con una ripida scala portava giù nella Tomba."

Inglese

"The house of the boss Hussain Khan was in the suburb of Lahore, in the dusty landscape of the burned country, where flocks from the North were grazing.It was a large house, half in wall and half in sheet metal, with a dirty and unpaved courtyard, where there was a well, his old Toyota van, the canopy which protected the wool and the cotton, and eventually, covered by bramble bush and weeds, the rusty iron door which by a steep stairs lead to the Tomb."

Introduzione al 20° secolo nella letteratura inglese

It's difficult to define groups of works or authors for the second part of the century because we are still involved in the atmosphere.

1910s-1920s : tendency of experimantation: Modernism is a break with conventions.

1930s : more conventional language and art.

1940s : arts and literature are influenced by the Second World War massacre.

1950s : there was an attitude like after the First World War.

1910s-1920s

At the end of the last century the society start to disagree with colonialism and other theories. Economically USA and Japan reached and overpass the UK. People didn't believe in the same values. The First World War was a massacre for deaths; this is called the Age of Anxiety, people want to create a new world but it was very difficult. This atmosphere was reflected in all form of arts: Dodecaphony (in music), Cubism (in painting), Dadaism (in painting), Consciousness (in literature). There wasn't only Modernism but also other types of art; Modernism was the Avanguarde.

William James. He was an american psychologist. Our thoughts and emotions are created by our mind as a stream not in disordered ways; some of these get lost, others are create in a second time but all of them reached that stream.

Henri Bergson. Time correspond on 2 concepts: chronological (outside the person); duration (inside our mind) that depends on what is our perception of time.

Sigmund Freud. He was a psychoanalist from Austria. The interpretations of Dreams: our unconscious elements come up and let us feels what we control during the day.

Consciousness technique: time is not important because what it's important it's what it's happens inside a man; any events can be chosen for the story; the thoughts are written during their creation. No more coherence, no more plot.