James Joyce: pensiero, tematiche e caratteristiche

Il flusso di coscienza, la produzione letteraria del XX secolo, il monologo interiore, il romanzo distopico, la concezione dell'artista, le caratteristiche, le tematiche e le opere di James Joyce (3 pagine formato doc)

Appunto di neapolis

JAMES JOYCE PENSIERO

James Joyce: pensiero, tematiche e caratteristiche.

Literary production. Fiction. The most popular literary expression in the 20th century was fiction. Novelists had previously concentrated above all in plot, and their main preoccupation had been with characters in society, since they thought that the function of novels was to present people in a social context, so that they became mirrors of their own age. In the 20th century the emphasis began to shift from society to man himself; characters became all important because of their inner selves.
Narrative as such began to lose its importance. The main causes for dissatisfaction with traditional forms were:
-Social and political events before and after the two world wars which created a general sense of discontent and anxiety;
-The collapse of all established principles;
-The expansion of education from primary school to university level;
-Freud’s studies in psychoanalysis and his theory of the unconscious;
-The development of radio and film techniques.

James Joyce: riassunto

JAMES JOYCE PENSIERO IN INGLESE

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL - The psychological novelists constituted the actual bridge from the 19th century to our own. One of these was Henry James. He developed his actions in chronological sequences. He nevertheless rejected the traditional canons which he analysed in all their finest nuances. The second writer to be included is Forster. Rather than plot, his main concern lies whit the complexities of characters, whom he usually presents caught in the clash between different cultures. Characters can be built around a single idea or capable of development and change in all their contradictions and doubts. The third great novelist in the group is Lawrence. Like Forster he also focused on the conflict existing between the conscious mind and the hidden drives of the unconscious, but unlike Forster, he was more explicit in denouncing the danger of repression and presenting sex a sort of religion.

JAMES JOYCE TEMATICHE

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. As far as English fiction is concerned, “Modernism” usually refers to those novelists who actually experimented with new forms and who, while focusing on the mental process that develop in the human mind, tried to explore them through what is called the stream of consciousness tecnique. This new tecnique applied to literature the theories developed by two philosophers: Bergson and James. Bergson’s conception of what he called “la durée”, proposed that inner time has a duration which eludes conventional clock time. James had stated that consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits but flows like a river or a stream.
INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
The method used to depict consciousness is the use of the interior monologue. Although this term is often confused with “stream of consciousness”, there is a distinction between them, since stream of consciousness refers to the mental activity itself, while the interior monologue is the instrument used to translate this phenomenon into words. It was Joyce and Virginia Woolf who exploited it more fully, although in different ways: Woolf used a more repetitive style and the so called “indirect interior monologue”, which provides more rational links for the association of ideas. Joyce went further in experimentation by using the “direct interior monologue”, whereby he shifted obruptly from thought to thought, without any apparent connection of verb, subject or even punctuation.

JAMES JOYCE CARATTERISTICHE

THE DYSTOPIAN NOVEL. There were many novelists active in the inter-war years and in the post-war period, although two stand out mainly as authors of utopian, or rather dystopian, fiction, Huxley and Orwell. However, while in previous ages Utopia was seen as a land of peace and brotherhood in contrast to the corruption and tyranny of the time in which the books were written, in our age the situation has been reversed. Under the impact of the conflicts preceding and succeeding the second world war, the old faith in “Human Perfectibility” and the “inevitability of progress” was undermined, and the 20th century utopia turned into a dystopia, in which the optimism of the previous fables was replaced by a gloomy vision of the future and a warning for the present.