James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

“Dubliners” (1914)

“A portrait of the artist as a young man”; “Ulysses” (1922)

Joyce was almost blind & this accounts for his method. He relieved upon his ear more than upon his eye. He was a refugee. He could not stomach the limitations Ireland imposed on him. He wrote about Dublin in his “Dubliners”. It’s Dublin that unites all stories in the collection.

Joyce should be read entirely for the proper understanding. His literary development begins with relatively conventional stories that later form a collection “Dubliners”. Then his career proceeds through “A portrait of the artist as a young man” to the very experimentation to “Ulysses” & finds its climate in the difficult but rewarding “Finnigan’s Wake”.

When we speak about “A portrait of the artist as a young man” we can say that some of the characters are transported bodily to “Ulysses”. Stephen Dedalus, a hero of “A portrait of the artist as a young man” in an embryonic form in some stories of “Dubliners” & becomes one of the central characters in “Ulysses”.

The importance of Joyce is in many respects dependant on the language he uses & on the way how he deals with the language. For many years Joyce was a professional language teacher. Language occupies a dominant place in his technique. He’s familiar with archaic & meaning of words he needed. Almost blind he was sensitive to the sound of words, touch, and smell. He tries to portray & verbalize these senses in language. Joyce is a master of reproducing the speech. He has captured the spirit of everyday conversation. He is unsurpassable in this respect. There are terms that describe his method – interior monologue, impressionist description, the stream of consciousness technique. These techniques develop but each of them produces a separate unique effect.

Some people say that the term “monologue” describes Joyce’s method better than “stream of consciousness”. His characters mostly talk to themselves. It’s the “how” they are doing it & in this respect they do not even try to establish some logical scheme & order. Joyce tries to reproduce the workings of the mind & the associations which are characteristic of the workings of the mind. If we compare Galsworthy & Joyce they both use the interior monologue. But with Galsworthy it’s an ordered text addressed to the person himself, but if it were not the person who is talking it could be anybody else. The form would not change. With Joyce everything seems to be verbalized but in fact much is implied. He doesn’t make pauses. He changes the speaker and does not give us any warning. The change gives us an ideal pause – the place to make conclusions. On the one hand even ticking of the clock & the speech of waves is verbalized. On the other hand reader should imagine the actions & intentions of the character.

Characters that boast of having no particular education speak in the accents of Dante & Shakespeare using the same philosophical notions. They form images worthy of poets. It’s so because Joyce never tried to curve his own want of interaction. He endowed his characters with his own mind & vocabulary (24000 words in “Ulysses”). His craftsmanship makes these words sound natural in the lips of any character that is chosen to be the speaker. The reader of “Ulysses” is emerged into the stream of consciousness, which is represented by allusive & highy packed language.

One has to consult dictionaries & encyclopedia to find the meanings of every allusion. He brought his technique to a climax & this climax gave us a structure of a novel that is based upon a pattern, which has been chosen prematurely & then carefully worked out. I. e. he took “Odyssey” & imitated it very carefully. In “Ulysses” the effect of simultaneousity is achieved by switching rapidly from one character to another. Joyce had a host of imitators but no one proved to be successful. Still Joyce’s chief stylistic device is stream of consciousness represented as interior monologue, inner thoughts combined with stimuli of the external world & the mental processes portrayed in disconnected sentences. Interior monologue is a succession of disconnected (at first sight) characters.

Joyce was born in Dublin.

“Dubliners”

His first 3 stories are about childhood told in the 1st person by an unnamed boy-narrator. This boy is disillusioned in his hopes, love & faith. It’s “The Sisters”, “Encounter”, and “Arabi”. The 2nd group consists of 4 stories about choices & in many cases wrong choices of a mate, vocation. Very often people get trapped & can’t get out (“Eveline”). The 3rd group is of 4 stories – it shows the results of entrancement in later life. It’s empty & horrible. It’s not their fault; it’s the fault of circumstances. The 4th group gives us 3 stories of public life, hopes, ambitions, frustration & disillusionment. In some of the stories the character is given an insight into the problem but it doesn’t help much. People ask each other questions & can’t answer them. The whole city suffers because of the paralysis of the will. The final story of t6he collection is “The Dead”. It’s a long story & genre is of the long story or novella. It’s the end of the novel, the finishing touch it is some outlet that is given after 14 stories of progressive paralysis. The final part of the novel is like a blanket that covers humanity. It shows that we’re all interdependent & can’t be separated from our ancestors & contemporaries.

“A portrait of the artist as a young man”

It’s written in a rather conventional style. There is some strange use of punctuation in it – the use of dashes instead of quotation marks.

The career of the main character Stephen Dedalus is followed from his schooldays upon the moment he turns to literary career. The novel corresponds to first 20 years of Joyce’s life. The major portion of the action takes place at school. From the descriptions of school & college we understand that these are places Joyce himself attended. Stephen is a capable student but he gets into trouble because of his independence & certain religious doubt. He’s tormented by sensual passions & because of his education he believes that the passions mark him for eternal domination. Finally after some unpleasant encounters he decides to leave Ireland for some foreign land.

“Ulysses”

It’s a pattern novel, in which the experiences of people are described through the date of June, 16.1904. Bulky novel describes practically 24 hours in the characters’ life & the construction of the novel is superficially to that of Homer’s “Iliad”. The chief characters are Leopold Bloom (a middle-aged advertising salesman), his half-Spanish wife Molly, their daughter Milly, Mr. Boilan (Molly’s lover), & Stephen Dedalus (a young intellectual, just returns from Paris, now teaching in a small private school).

Joyce is very much naturalistic showing us social details, feelings that are not shared (after a substantial dinner or being unjustly offended.