MODERNISM. Modernism is a reaction against 19th century ideas and conventions.

The sources for this movement were:

1) late-Victorian epistemological crisis. Darwin’s “On the origin of species”: man is descended from
some lowly–organised form so there were changes in the species. The evolutionary mechanism worked
according to natural selections. Huxley was a biologist who recognised the limits beyond which the
human mind could not go in explaining the ultimate mysteries of the universe. Lyell’s “Principles of
geology” had a disturbing effect as he provided geological evidence for the earth’s being much older
than was compatible with a literal belief in the Book of Genesis.
2) Modern philosophers. Freud: a blow was struck at man’s sense of responsibility as superego effects
ego, ego fights between es and superego; Schopenhauer; Einstein; Bergson; Nietzsche: Western values
are a means devised by the weakest to trap the strongest force.
3) Historical events. The Victorian period was dominated by such ideas as empire, civilization and
progress. Each of these was being questioned: the independence of India was under way, the First War
had shown that civilization was a false value hiding man’s bestiality.
In literature the most important changes are:
- the breakdown of traditional genres
- the fragmentation of the traditional ideas of time and space
- the consequent collapse of the traditional plot with a story that has a beginning and an end
- the use of complex language which often defies traditional syntax, grammar and punctuation
- an accent on psychological truth rather than on realism
- an adoption of free verse in poetry

JAMES JOYCE
He is one of the most important novelists of all time and one of the greatest innovators of 20th century
prose writing. He was born in Dublin in 1882 and he belonged to the Catholic middle class. He started
studying Italian, French and English at the University College in Dublin. On 16th of June 1904 he met
Nora Barnacle, who later became his wife. When the director of the Berlitz Institute of Trieste offered
him a teaching position, Joyce moved. In Trieste he became friends with the Italian writer Italo Svevo,
who greatly influenced Joyce’s style and themes. In 1914 when the IWW broke out, Joyce moved to
Zurich where he started working on what would become his masterpiece, “Ulysses” → he reproduced
the structure of Homer's Odyssey; the 18 chapters of the book draw inspiration from episodes
contained in the Greek epic poem.
In 1920 he moved to Paris. After the Germans occupied France in 1940, Joyce and his family went back
to Zurich, where he died in 1941. Joyce is to be considered one of the greatest representatives of
Modernism.
Joyce’s literary works reveal his complex relationship with Ireland, even thought he left Dublin in 1904;
they are all obsessively set in Ireland, which he both loved and hated. For him Ireland was a country
dominated by stagnation and stasis, but was also his main source of inspiration: in all of his works
Joyce drew inspiration from Irish people and places, which he portrayed with vivid realism and
attention.
 “DUBLINERS” (1914)
Is a collection of 15 short stories, they revolve around the lives of 15 typical inhabitants of the city of
Dublin. There is a strong sense of disillusionment and failure. They also talk about the relationship
between individuals and collective institutions, such as politics, the musical world and the Church.
The last story of the collection is meaningfully entitled “The Dead”, it is an implacable portrait of the Irish
middle class, stuck in a condition of irresolvable mediocrity and stubbornness. The protagonist Gabriel
is the prototype of the mediocre Irish middle class, an individual who lives his life like a dead person.
They are followed by “Eveline” which talks about the impossibility to escape from suffering, the passivity
of Irish people and the paralysis of their will.

THE CITY. The Dublin that Joyce portrays is a static and provincial town, a place which doesn’t have
the cosmopolitan atmosphere of many other European capitals of that time. This inevitably affects the
lives of its inhabitants, who are represented as being imprisoned in a city that doesn’t give them the
chance to grow.

PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS. Beside Dublin, what unites the characters is the common
nature of failure they experience. All the characters have a desire, they try to fulfil their lives by
overcoming all the obstacles to this ambition, and ultimately surrender because they don’t have the will
to transform their desire into action. This universal condition of inaction affects all the inhabitants of
Dublin and is defined by Joyce as a paralysis. It’s a spiritual stagnation of the self, a universal lack of
growth.
Apparently there is only one potential way to escape: epiphany. Joyce uses it to refer to the moments
in which the characters of Dubliners experience the sudden revelation of their condition of paralysis.
Unfortunately this revelation doesn’t lead to a real change in their lives: it simply makes them more
aware of how dead and paralysed they are.

The COMMON ELEMENTS for the Modernism in the stories are:

- the setting, Dublin, which is both realistically individualised with its streets, houses and people and
made symbolically universal as the epitome of the modern metropolis where human life is losing its
natural quality;
- the main theme, the failure to find a way out of “paralysis” which is the typical condition of
modern man in the modern metropolis, runs through the 15 stories;
- the use of epiphany, that is the sudden revelation of an emblematic truth or of the inner reality of
things;
- Joyce abandoned both the omniscience of the 19th century narrators and the single point of view.

“THE DEAD”
The Dead can be divided into three parts:
1) the arrival of the guests (among whom Gabriel and his wife Gretta; Miss Ivors, a university teacher;
Freddy Malins; Mr Brown, an English Protestant)
2) Gabriel’s dance with Miss Ivors; the supper; Gabriel’s speech.
3) Gretta hears a song that reminds her of someone; they leave the Christmas party and they reach the
hotel where there is the revelation of Gretta’s past love.
Critics suggest that this division corresponds to this interpretation. In the 1st part it is evident an
attention to social relationships. In the 2nd there is a representation of a superficial world: he claims
that the world of the living is characterised by superficial social relationships, by gaffes, by mistakes. In
the 3rd part we leave the world of realism to achieve the world of the essence: if the world of realism is
the world of the living, the world of essence is the world of the dead.
Through an epiphany (a sudden psychological revelation), Gabriel acquired a new consciousness
realising that the real essence is beyond the surface of reality.
Beyond this division there is a union of themes. The theme of paralysis, Joyce is convinced that
paralysis is a typical condition of modern men who lived in industrialised cities. Men are no more able
to act, there is a common, social, spiritual, political paralysis, a hemiplegia of will. Men are condemned
to failure, this is evident at three different levels: when Lily refuses a tip there’s Gabriel’s failure as a
gentleman. In the dialogue with Miss Ivors who calls him “West Briton” there’s his failure as an Irish man
(Gabriel’s cosmopolitanism is misinterpreted as lack of support for the Irish Question). With Gretta’s
revelation there is his failure as a man, as a lover, as a husband. Gretta is at the top of the stairs, he is
at the bottom. He’s looking at her while she’s listening to a romantic song. He thinks she is dying for
desire for him, but she is thinking about Michael Fury, her romantic love when she was 16.

IRISHNESS OF DUBLINERS. In Dubliners the setting and the environment are totally urban. In fact the
protagonist is the city Dublin. Joyce wanted to leave his city bodily, but he was not able to get it out of
his thoughts. He had a love-hate relationship with this city which he didn’t really want to forget.
Dublin disgusted him with its paralytic decay, with its stifling conventions (for example social
conventions); he didn’t bear the nationalism of people, their narrow mindness (Irish people tended to
focus only on Irish culture, Irish literature, Irish art instead of enjoying international culture). But he
admired its dignity, its humanity.
Although Dublin is realistically individualised with streets, places ecc., it symbolically represents all the
modern cities in which men are losing their original qualities. In fact Joyce said: “Dublin could be
Everyman’s city”.
The Irishness of The Dead can be analysed at five levels:
- Religion: Gabriel is the only Protestant among a lot of Catholics. At that time there was a Catholic
revival with political intent: underlying Catholicism was a way to put the emphasis on their Irishness
against British Protestantism. Joyce was obsessed with religion and this fact can be explained taking
into account Joyce’s reaction against the religion of his country. The obsessive recurrence of religious
references (for example to the Cistercian monks who sleep in their coffins) finds an explanation in the
fact that he had abandoned the faith of his father and this event marked his soul deeply.
- Culture: Irish culture is present everywhere. There are clear references to Irish architecture, literature
and music because the guests at the party only talk about Irish cultural aspects.
- Politics: in the dialogue between Gabriel and Miss Ivors it is clear Joyce’s political vision. Miss Ivors is
the typical representative of the nationalistic ideology of the majority of Dubliners, while Gabriel
supports the cosmopolitan vision of Joyce.
- Geography: there are detailed references to many places.
- Autobiography: an autobiographical element is Gabriel’s physical aspect, then the profession: he is
a teacher and a journalist. There are also autobiographical elements in a deeper sense revealing
personal tendencies such as his jealousy, his cosmopolitan culture, his love for literature.
SYMBOLS:

NAMES.
- Gabriel: Gabriel is the name of an angel who is the symbol of both life and death. In fact before the
epiphany he was spiritually dead, then he grew up. But he is also the symbol of protection, in fact he
wants to protect everybody (his wife, his aunts ecc.). Being protective is a positive attitude but in Gabriel
this reveals his tendency to protagonism, to be at the center of the general attention with all the others
around him. He is guilty of pride, because he regards himself as superior, as an angel. But his ego
receives three rebuffs.
- Michael Fury: the name is associated with an angel, he will live forever in Gretta’s heart. The surname
is connected with fire in fact he is the source of heat and light.
- Lily: the short story begins with her name which is linked with the idea of purity and innocence, but
also death because in Ireland it is a flower used in funerals.
- Browne: it is the dominant colour of Dublin and it suggests the idea of lack of vitality.

SNOW. There is a representation of the snow at three levels. In the first part it coincides with the
realistic level: in fact Joyce describes the snow over the overcoats of the guests, over the monuments
ecc. It is a cold winter night and it is snowing. It looks like coldness and lack of love, in contrast with the
warmth of the house, but soon we realise that this warmth is only that of the fireplaces and not a
metaphorical one as all social relationships are characterised by cold conventions. In the central part
the snow becomes the symbol of Gabriel’s desire of escaping, of going out. After the epiphany it is
the symbol of rebirth and renewal: the snow covering everything, falling everywhere represents
Gabriel’s new ability to be part of humanity, not at the centre of it. So there is a combination of realism
and symbolism in the sense that some realistic details become symbols.

TRAVEL TOWARD WEST. The protagonists go toward the west on their return home. West is the
symbol for death and for a new awareness because he became more mature.

LIGHT. At first Gabriel is never in front of light, Gretta did. The moment in which he reflected himself in
a mirror represents the beginning of a new awareness. At the end he is in front of the light from the
window. His previous condition was characterised by darkness: when he arrives, he stays for a little in
the dark hall with Lily

THREE. There is also the symbolism of number three, it is an inverted symbolism of the Trinity, so that
Gabriel is seen as the reverse of God. This symbol is evident in the three rebuffs of his ego: when he
tries to corrupt Lily (symbol of purity), when Miss Ivors calls him “West Briton” and when Gretta is
thinking about another man.

THEME OF DEATH. Clear and direct references to death: during the dinner the attention moves from
the present to the past, to the world of dead: 1) there is the mention to those monks who sleep in their
coffins. 2) Gabriel’s speech is a sort of funeral oration because of the references to the passing of time.
3) The speech about lyrical music is focused on the past.
Recalling death: 1) recalling Michael 2) Gabriel thinks about the next death of his aunt.
The world of death is considered as the world beyond the surface of material reality, the world of the
ontological essence of being.

CONCLUSION. Joyce introduces a character who at the beginning reveals himself through his actions
and his words: the insincerity of his speech reveals his conventionalism and also his main defect, his
self –projection. The feelings he has for his wife are not deep and sincere: in reality it is love for
himself. The epiphany of Michael Fury makes him acquire a new awareness. He is conscious of his
paralysis now and he is able to go beyond his limits and to come in contact with the world of the living
and the dead. Before he was not able to understand humanity and most of all his wife. After Gretta’s
revelation he felt a sense of jealousy, but then he changes: he gradually abandons his egoism and he
feels as a member of a larger community. He is ready to embrace every man as a member of mankind.
There is a dissolution of his individual world. In this sense he comes in contact with the world of the
living. But he is also near the world of the dead because his new consciousness brings him to
understand the real essence of life. In the last scene the snow falls “upon all the living and the dead”
meaning a new rebirth.

“EVELINE”
It is not easy to summarise the story as it is a confluence of actions, inner thoughts and dialogues. It
can be divided in two parts: in the 1st we see Eveline in her home and Joyce describes her thoughts
triggered by external objects; the 2nd takes place in the harbour.
In the 1st section her thoughts range from the distant past (her happy childhood, her mother died
insane and left 2 children in Eveline’s care), to the recent past (her job at the store, the first time she
had seen Frank, the quarrel between her father and Frank), to the present (she’s a 19-year-old shop
assistant in a store, her brother Earnest is dead, Harry is a church decorator, her father is a violent
drunkard), to the future (she was about to leave for Argentina where she and Frank will get married
and Eveline will be treated with more respect). In the 2 nd section she is not able to answer Frank’s call
“come” and she doesn’t board the ship with him.

In this story there is no introduction, the narration begins in medias res and only Eveline’s flashbacks
provide information about her past and present life. In fact most of the story is the interior
monologue of Eveline’s mind. Thoughts are associated freely, our mind (when it is left free) doesn’t
work in chronological order or in a very logical way. These thoughts are activated firstly by external
stimuli and then each thought generates another one.
So we have an insight into the mind of the protagonist and we are given a description of her.
At the very beginning a series of elements convey the idea of paralysis: “in her nostrils was the odour
of dusty cretonne”, “dusted object”, “broken armonium”, “yellowing photograph”. These details let us
know that it is a lower middle class family that used to be better off (naturalistic connotation), but this
dust suggests the idea of immobility, stillness, paralysis.
So we have the sensation in advance that Eveline will be unable to escape from her prison, even if she
shifts from the determination to leave to the passive acceptance of her nightmarish life: as she sits
musing, she is thoughtful but determined even if sometimes regretful at the idea of leaving her world.
Then she feels scared and her terror convinces her that leaving is the right choice. At the harbour at
first she is confused and then totally passive and empty.
She wants to escape because the reality she lives in is frightening and unacceptable. Miss Gavan, her
employer, had always treated her with superiority, her father was violent, often drunken and selfish.
She realises he is unfair with her even if she could not help remembering his best qualities
(tenderness). She wants to leave home in the hope that her life will be different. Her opportunity is
represented by Frank. She had been charmed by him for his kindness and manliness. Eveline herself
realises that maybe it’s not deep love but she only wants to be treated differently, with respect. And
Frank represents this chance. All these are reasons in favour of the decision of leaving home. But she
considers also the reasons against: she feels safe and protected in a familiar environment, as opposed
to being in a “distant unknown country” and also the thought of her reputation, that is what will people
think of her if she runs away to a far off country without being married first. But actually her life is so
hard that in weighing up the pros and cons, she resolves to leave. She can’t take the decision because
she hasn’t an inner strength which could make her leave her house. Joyce’s message is that it’s
impossible to really change one’s life in a city dominated by spiritual paralysis.
Apart from Frank, the characters are typically Dubliners. Her father is self-centred and authoritarian,
Eveline is passive and receives no help from religion, education or her family. Joyce describes the
psychological paralysis of Dubliners. Eveline lives in a nightmare, it would be easier apparently for her
to leave her home but, put to test, it is hard as she’s emotionally paralysed.
Joyce puts the blame for this immobility on several institutions. We are not told anything specific about
Eveline’s education but certainly she attended school. But education hasn’t helped her to leave her
“prison”. The same is true with religion: a priest is mentioned in the story but Eveline receives no help.
The strongest blame is put on her mother: her mother’s life was as hard as Eveline’s (she mentions her
mother’s life as “a life of commonplace sacrifices”), so hard that she went crazy at the end of her young
life. But on her deathbed she made Eveline promise that she would look after her family as long as she
could. And this promise becomes a chain as when Eveline is uncertain if she could go or not, this
promise comes to her mind and has a paralysing effect.

“ULYSSES”
On 16th June 1904 Joyce met and fell in love (first appointment) with Nora Barnacle. This day became
the “Bloomsday” of Ulysses.
Ulysses is set in this single day. The basic idea of Ulysses – a day in the life of an inhabitant of Dublin –
represents the attempt to present a character more completely than ever before, giving his life in
immense details. The book was written to be a detailed account of an ordinary day in the life of an
ordinary man, Leopold Bloom.
Characters are not followed from birth to death or along the lines of a complete story, the plot doesn’t
exist in a traditional sense but this book represents the attempt to present a character more
completely than ever before.
How is it possible to describe a character completely only describing a single day in his life? Moreover,
an ordinary day? The answer is in the new conception of time presented by the philosopher Bergson
and it is a revolutionary idea: according with this philosopher there is a coincidence between past
and presence and between present and future through memory, recollections, dreams and hopes.
In fact when we recollect our past we relive it and when we have expectations, dreams we anticipate
our future. Any day, any moment is equally suitable to represent the life of an individual, our
consciousness preserves the memory of our intellectual, emotional, physical life so that each single
moment contains in itself not only traces of our present but also of our past and our future.
Consequently every day, every moment can represent the life of an individual because every moment
contains not only our present but also our past and our future. So investigating into our consciousness
in a short arc of time is equally significant as investigating for a long period of time.
In this book there are always two dimensions: the realistic and the mythological dimension.
- The realistic dimension: it regards the description of the everyday details of this ordinary day.
Leopold leaves his home at 8 o’clock on this Thursday morning in June to buy his breakfast and finally
returns at 2 o’clock the following morning. In the hours in-between, he “lands on the shores” of many
streets, he walks along many streets, he buys the newspaper, goes to the toilet, has lunch in a pub,
goes to the library, to a concert, to the hospital to visit a friend of his and at night also to a brothel.
During this wandering he recalls the unfaithfulness of his wife Molly, the death of his little son Rudy and
meets a contemporary version of Telemachus, Stephen Dedalus, who momentarily becomes his
adopted son. At the end he comes back home with Stephen while Molly is sleeping. Joyce gives a great
amount of details when he describes these scenes. For example at one o’clock he is on his way to the
library and Joyce describes when Leopold begins to be hungry, the fact that he has only food in mind
and so he stops at Davy Byrne’s pub (it still exists) and orders a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of
wine. Then he imagines the procession of digestion happening in his body.
- The mythological dimension: there is a close correspondence between each scene in Ulysses and
Homer’s Odyssey in fact the title of every single chapter refers to a mythical episode. Here are some
examples: Hades → the graveyard, Lestrygonians → the lunch at the pub, Circe → the brothel, Ithaca
→ the house, Penelope → the bed.
In Homer’s Odyssey Ulysses goes down in the world of Hades, that is the world of the dead and this
episode is represented in the scene where Leopold goes to the graveyard.
When he is at the pub to eat and drink the gulls swoop and this suggests the habits of Lestrygonians.
Homer described them as a group of cannibals who pounced from their heights upon the ships of
Ulysses and ate his sailors up. Only prudence permitted the Homeric hero to escape these monstrous
creature.
Circe is the magician who transformed men into pigs but she became the lover of Ulysses and this love
affair is reflected in the brothel scene.
At the end of his trip Ulysses lands on his native island, Ithaca, as Leopold “lands” on his house but he
doesn’t find the faithful Penelope but the unfaithful Molly.

PARALLELS with Homer’s Odyssey. The wanderings and tribulations of the epic hero, his adventures
and his final return home to his wife are used as a parallel to the events in the life of common men and
women in modern Dublin. Joyce used the epic model to stress the lack of heroism, of ideals, of love, of
trust in the modern world. Bloom doesn’t become any wiser for all his experience, he finds a son but
they aren’t really father and son and they meet, significantly, in a brothel. At the end of this day, they go
home, but instead of Penelope who has been faithful to her absent husband for 10 years, Molly has
been unfaithful.
The epic structure thus becomes a mirror in which to reflect the modern waste land. This parallelism
with Homer is the symbolic level of the work, but it also has a realistic dimension.
In fact Joyce defined Ulysses as 1) a modern Odyssey 2) the epic of the human body. As far as the
second definition is concerned, the work is a summa of every physical experience and a deny of the
metaphysical. Many realistic details are given ( ex. Bloom goes to the toilet).
THEMES. Other main themes are: search for the father and search for the son. Bloom is in search of
a son because his only son (he has an adolescent daughter) died at the age of eleven. Stephen looks for
a paternal figure as his father is an alcoholic, irascible man. They are both loveless and also in exile in
their own country. In fact Stephen has rebelled against many values in his life (rebellion is another
theme) : he has rejected his family, religion (the Catholic faith of his mother and he feels guilty), and
also the school where he worked. Bloom, who is a Jew and thus the exiled par excellence, is frustrated
because of both death (the death of his son obsesses him) and love (his wife betrays him).
Unfaithfulness is another main motive in the story : Molly’s sensuality and unfaithfulness play a
significant role in the work.

STYLE. The most striking element of style is the use of the stream of consciousness in its literary form
of interior monologue. It is a psychological category and it indicates the casual association of
thoughts, impressions, and emotions of a person who is letting her/his mind flow freely. The use of the
s.o.c. secured two results: 1) it allowed the reader to have an insight into the mind of the character,
showing its rational and irrational sides and bringing to the surface the innermost experiences and
feelings in unexpected associations. 2) It liberated the novel from the presence of the narrator.
With the interior monologue he abolished the need for the narrator’s presence by admitting the reader
directly into a character’ mind.
The type of language is directly linked with the type of character and his/her psychological
characteristics: Stephen’s language is that of a person with an academic education, Bloom’s inferior
education is reflected in a less rich vocabulary. His practical sense, his knowledge of real life make him
more human than Stephen. As for Molly, the long famous i.m. that concludes the novel is a triumph of
womanhood. Her enthusiasm for life, her amorality, her genuine sensuality are expressed in a
language which is rich in colour, sounds, tactile sensations.