The age of modernism (1901-45)

The Age of Modernism(1901-45)

1914 World War I1916Easter Rising . Catholic Repubblicans rebel against British rule in Ireland.1917 USA enters war against Germany.Russian Revolution.1919The treaty of Versailles drawn up between Germany and the Allied powers. 1919-22 In India Gandhi initiates a policy on non-violent protest against the British government.1921The Irish Free State is created (Ulster excluded).1936 Spanish Civil War breaks out.1939World War II begins.

Historical momenta time of war Cultural InfluencesSigmun Freud

Mans conscious behaviour is governed by irrational unconscious drives which are established very early life.Mans percepetion of realityy is subjective he organizes the information through the principle of Free association of ideas.William James

Mans mind record every single experience as a continuos flow of the already into not yetstream of consciousness: Consciousness is something fluid which flows like a streamHenry Bergson

Time is a duration (duree) and not a series of poits.He didtinguishes:

-Historical time-Psychological timeTime is not linear.We experience a mixture of past,present and future in the same moment.C. Gustav Jung

He added the concept of collective unconscious.A sort of cultural memory containng the universal myths and beliefs of the human race,which operates on a symbolic level.Albert Einstein

Space and time are subjective dimensions.With the theory of Relativity he caused a revolution in science,art ad literature.Friedrich Nietzsche

He substitued Christian morality with a belief in human power and perfectibilityGod is dead

The first half of the 20 th century was dominated byModernism,a complex and multifaced movement which involved different art forms throughout Europe. A significant characteristic of many Modernist works,expecially in the field of literature and the visual art, is a strong interest in experimentalism. The features of this movement are:looking for balance and certaintiesThe spiritual desert of modern lifeexploration of the primal unconsciousThe ultimate futility of human existenceModernismModernism in art:Cubism.

The beginning of 20 th century saw an escalation in artistic innovation.Its epicentre was in Paris where took place many of the most representative movements in art,literatue and music.In the visual arts,Picasso and Braque broke with the representational art and fixed perspective to explore multiple planes and volumetric relationship in their cubist paintings.

Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907)Oil on canvasMoMa, New York.Modernism in literature:Stream of consciousness Every moment is the centre and meeting place of an extraordinary number of perceptions which have not yet been expressed ,, Virginia Woolf

Features:

Lack of formal or chronological orderAction takes place in characters mindDisappearance of the plotInterior monologue

Simultaneus Visions (1911)Umberto BoccioniJames Joyce (1882-1941)Life:Born in Dublin in 1882. 1888: He studies at Clonglowes Wood College ( one of the most prestigious Jesuit school in Ireland) and then at the University College (Catholic University of Dublin).1905: He goes whit his wife Nora to Trieste,Italy.1919-30:He meets in Paris, Ezra Pound.1931-40:Because of the beginning of the II Word War he returns in Switzerland. Works :1907-10 He publishes a collection of poetry Chamber Music.1914Dubliners.1916 He published his semi- autobiographical first novel: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.1922 : Ulysses.

Joyces first short stories published in 1914 in a collection.

Genre: Realist fiction; urban literature

Language: English (with some Irish and Hiberno-English sayings)

Structure:The stories are arranged in four groups, that correspond to four phases of mans life: Childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life.

Setting (time) Early1900Setting (place) Dublin

Themes: The prison of routine; the desire for escape;the intersection of life and death

Motifs:Paralysis: A feeling that many of the characters experience as a result of being tied to antiquated and limited cultural and social tradictions . Joyce himself once defined Dublin as the center of paralysis.

Epiphanies: Joyces novels are characterized by peaks of intensity in the narration that the writer calls epiphanies.An epiphany is a sudden revelation in which the soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant.Dubliners

Focus on EvelinePlot:A young woman of about nineteen years of age sits by her window, waiting to leave home. She muses on the aspects of her life that are driving her away, while "in her nostrils was the smell of dustycretonne". Her mother has died as has her older brother Ernest. Her remaining brother, Harry is on the road "in the church decorating business". She fears that her father will beat her as he used to beat her brothers, and she has little loyalty for her sales job. She has fallen for a sailor named Frank who promises to take her with him toBuenos Aires(spelled Buenos Ayres). Before leaving to meet Frank, she hears anorgan grinderoutside, which reminds her of a melody that played on an organ on the day her mother died and the promise she made to her mother to look after the home. At the dock where she and Frank are ready to embark on a ship together, Eveline is deeply conflicted and makes the painful decision not to leave with him. Nonetheless, her face registers no emotion at all.Like other tales inDubliners, such as "Araby", "Eveline" features a circular journey, where a character decides to go back to where their journey began, and where the result of their journey is disappointment and reluctance to

Analysis:

Narrator: Third person narrator, that represents Evelines cousciousness

Protagonist: Eveline: a young womanforcedtolive aboring life , sheis introverted, passive,submittedby her father, influenced by thementalityofthe countryandreligion, fearful, unhappyandunsatisfied.Eveline represents the feeling of paralysis, because at the end of the story she decides not to gowithFrank, because she has an epiphany, she hears the sound of an organ and recalls her mother, so she remains motionless at the seaport.

travel.

full titleUlyssesauthorJames Joycetype of workNovelgenreModernist novel; comic novel; quest novellanguageEnglishtime and place writtenTrieste, Italy; Zurich, Switzerland; Paris;19141921date of first publicationIndividual episodes were published serially starting in1918; as a novel, it was first published in1922

themesThe quest for paternity; the remorse of conscience; compassion as heroic; parallax or the necessity of multiple perspectivesnarrator .An amalgamation of anonymous narrators, episode fifteen has no narrator, in episode eighteen Molly is first person narrator.point of view. Episodes are told from the first and third-person viewpoint; episode three and eighteen features an interior monologue.tensePresentsetting (time)8:00A.M., June16,1904approximately3A.M.,June17,1904setting (place)Dublin, Ireland, and its surrounding suburbsprotagonistStephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloommajor conflictMolly Blooms infidelity with Blazes Boylan; Stephen Dedaluss search for a symbolic father; Leopold Blooms desire for a son (his only son died eleven years ago several days after his birth)Ulysses

Plot :The novel tells the story of a day in the life of advertising salesman Leopold Bloom,who gets up,walks around Dublin,meeting various people along the way like the indigent writer Stephen Dedalus with whom he visits a brothel and gets drunk,before finally going home and laying beside his wife Molly.This novel takes inspiration from the epic travels of Ulysses .

Features of the novel:The various odysseys of Bloom,Stephen and Molly are voyages through the internal sea of their consciousness.Joyce uses the interior monologue to simulate the workings of consciousness .Firstly he employs incomplete sentences,then there is a disjunctive syntax,slips of tongue,sudden changes of tense to indicate the the contemporary of past and present and anticipate future.Thoughts are connected by free association.11The main characters of the novel are based on Omers OdysseyCharactersThe Odyssey:Odysseus: The Greek soldier and hero whose ship,returning from Troy is blown off.After 20 years of bizzare and pericolous events he finally return to Ithaca. Ulysses:Leopold Bloom: A middle-aged Jewish advertising canvasser who steps out of his house one morning to go wondering around Dublin.He his the expression of a society which aims at survive.His own life in Dublin is an Odyssey.Leopold Bloom is an antihero, he is the modern imperfect and fragile man.Telemachus :Son of Ulysses awaiting his fathers return is forced to share his home with his mother suitors who treat him badly.Stephen Dedalus:Indigent and arrogant young writer.He meets Bloom who offers him a new house.Dedalus is an autobiographical character ,he (like Joyce) feels himself as a prisoner of his land (Ireland) and so the only way to escape is literature.Penelope:Ulysses wife who waits faithfully her husbands returns.She avoids the advaces of her suitors.Molly Bloom:Blooms wife,she is a semi-professional singer and an adulterous wife who has a string of lovers.Molly embodies her society ,with its negative aspects and immoral behaviours.We walk through ourselves,meeting robbers,ghosts,giants,oldmen,youngmen,wives,widows,brothers-in-love,but always meeting ourselvesJames Joyce, Ulysses (chapter 9)