James Joyce: Dubliners PDF

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Inglese

JAMES JOYCE: DUBLINERS ! ‹"Dubliners"› is a collection of 15 short stories. The characters are inhabitants of Dublin, and each story introduce a different prospective of the city: we have 15 different points of view of it.! An important element is the personal prospective each story is presented from! Dublin is the setting for all Joyce’s works, because he was attached to his home country and he wanted to make other people interested in Ireland (even if he spent a lot of his life abroad). He does not include his personal opinions, and he doesn’t use his point of view: living abroad gave him the possibility of having an objective prospective, and the distance made him more reliable. His perception became wider thanks to the fact that he lived outside Ireland: he uses the character’s personality, but not his one. He still leaves a message, but with other people’s voices. He tries to describe Ireland\Dublin with other people’s eyes, with the intention of being absolutely absent in his characters. ! Being detached from Ireland made Joyce really critical: in his collection his criticism to Dublin (politics, society…) is really evident. He was able to portray his country by pointing out negative aspects\witnesses\problems, and he underlines how the Irish society\politic\morality were provincial and old (that’s why he left). All of the characters feel stuck in a society that doesn’t evolve and that they don’t belong to, a static and provincial society.! The 15 stories are divided in 3 groups.! 1) stories related to childhood ! 2) Stories related to adulthood! 3) Investigation on the relationship between individuals and society! Joyce describes the society from abroad, and he highlighted the problems\conflict of society. ! • The first problem he pointed out was the provincialism\stagnation. The irish society was catholic, old, provincial and didn’t give any possibility of change to the Dubliners.! • PARALYSIS: Characters can’t fulfill their desires, they feel a sense of failure and frustration. They are not able to overcome obstacles and limits imposed by society. They can’t satisfy their needs. They can’t move on\fight, and these condition is called by the author —> PARALYSIS. = common condition among Dubliners that refers to the fact that these people are not able to achieve their happiness by fighting for what they want. The paralysis is considered by Joyce as a physical and spiritual stagnation\condition, and is common to all of the 15 characters.! • The main reasons of Paralysis have to do with: social conventions\rules or morality&religion (really stright in Ireland) or familiar bounds or lack of growth due to responsibility! Pagina 1 di 2

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Inglese

• EPIPHANY (=turning point): There is a moment in the characters’ life when they realize that that are paralyzed: the epiphany.! The epiphany can be caused by a sudden revelation (a music, a sound, a person, ecc..), something that doesn’t have a rational meaning but a personal meaning. They understand they are paralyzed, but they can’t do anything to change their situation: they just understand how they feel but they can’t move. The epiphany doesn’t lead to any radical\real change. !

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