Literary Modernism and Joyce

1. Literary Modernism and Joyce

2. Literary Modernism • Most critical studies on literary modernism begin by discussing the predominant world view held by intellectuals during the period just before the first world war. • The generation of artists who had been born in the 1880s and early 1890s came of age during the first decade of the 20th century, and they were coming to terms with a world that had changed dramatically in terms of religious, economic, and political realities.

3. Literary Modernism • Darwin’s ideas had called into question the place of human beings within the cosmos. Concepts such as “survival of the fittest” and “chance” interfered with the ability of writers and thinkers to assume an orderly universe or a morality based upon the divine origin of the species.

4. Literary Modernism • Marx and Engels’ economic theories called into question the moral legitimacy of the middle class and laid out in the open the proposition that social structures were the result of ideologies – ideologies that could be questioned and changed.

5. The work of women in the United States and the Commonwealth to gain suffrage and to find a voice in the public realm called into question gender roles – which were also increasingly viewed as the result of economic and social ideologies.

6. Literary Modernism • In addition to destabilizing the social and cultural practices of most western nations, these changes impacted the work of creative artists, many of whom viewed the break from the past – at least initially – as a welcome respite from art and literature that had become characterized by a reliance on form, sentimentality, and what Virginia Woolf termed a “false” realism, in which authors rendered detailed descriptions of the material world, but did little to advance readers’ understanding of characters’ inner lives.

7. Literary Modernism

8. Literary Modernism • Early in the movement, literary modernists focused on these shifts: • FORM: In poetry, the focus moved away from formal verse to free verse, and in fiction, the focus moved away from plot to an evocation of the internal lives of characters – what we would now call “interiority.” • AUDIENCE: The reader was increasingly expected to perform interpretative functions, as writers abandoned “authorial intrusions” and predictably structured plot lines. Instead, writers developed what became known as “fragmentary” units that were often held together in subtle ways that required the reader to intuit meaning.

9. Literary Modernism • With the Irish context, the turn of the last century was a time of great political and artistic debate. During the 19th century, Irish Catholics, who made up the majority of the population in the country, developed political organizations designed to repeal the land laws that had left most Irish workers dependent upon English-based landlords and factory owners. As part of this new wave of nationalism, many intellectuals learned Gaelic and encouraged the development of a literature that reclaimed and reshaped Irish myths and legends.

10. Literary Modernism

11. Literary Modernism • Over the last three decades, literary scholars have looked at Ireland during the beginning of the 20th century as a nation struggling to shake off the impact of colonial rule. What complicated the situation in Ireland was the fact that the Catholic Church had often been complicit in the political machinations that kept reform from succeeding. • When Joyce came of age in the early years of the 20th century, he certainly could have joined what became known as the Irish Literary Revival, but he chose not to do so.

12. Literary Modernism • Joyce was just as eager as most Irish Catholics to have an independent Irish state, but by the time he reached adulthood, he viewed most social institutions with grave distrust. He felt that the church, the government (regardless of who was in charge), and the educational system were all allied against the work of a true creative intellect. He refused to join or to support any endeavor that asked his allegiance, because Joyce felt that his first and only allegiance was to art. In this view, he was joined by many of the leading literary modernists.

13. James Joyce: Artist and Citizen

14. Joyce’s Overarching Vision • The 2 important tropes in Joyce’s work are the artist & the city. While Joyce was editing Dubliners (the city), he was also writing Stephen Hero (the artist), the prototype for Portrait; later, Ulysses would represent a linking of these tropes. • The artist was to practice a type of isolation that freed him from convention, but he had to serve the community. • “The paralysing force of the city, diagnosed in Dubliners, had to be matched with an uncompromising spirit who would not serve, who would sever his roots rather than submit, because only by such refusal and such severance would it be possible, subsequently, for him to respond fruitfully to contact with a more tolerant and less embittered spirit” (Peake 62).

15. The 20th-Century Bildungsroman

16. Portrait • Structure of Portrait: • Five chapters, each depicting the artist’s struggle, first to master his environment and then to free himself from it. • “At the end of each chapter, he attains the completion of one state in his growth; he finds a new world and a point of rest, though in every case a temporary one which collapses under the strain of some internal pressure” (Peake 70).

17. Stephen at Clongowes

18. Chapter One • Chapter One: chief problem: social adjustment. A crisis is provoked when SD is unjustly punished; However, he goes to the rector out of crushed pride: Father Dolan has forgotten his name: “It was his own name that he should have made fun of it he wanted to make fun. Dolan: it was like the name of a woman that washed clothes.” When the rector sides with SD, it is a social victory & SD is temporarily at peace. Asserting his identity & individuality is the first act of an artist – this represents his epiphany of self and of the freeing aspects of assertiveness.

19. Stephen at Belvedere College

20. Chapter Two • Chapter Two: SD’s social adjustment crumples under pressure of new external and internal forces – there are a series of collapses and recoveries. His family’s financial difficulties encourage him to withdraw into himself. Rather than return Emma’s advances, he writes a poem about her – signaling his ability to distance himself from – and to romanticize – reality. At Belvedere, his social position is retrieved; he is the “model youth” of the school. However, he is plagued by sexual fantasies – fantasies that merge with reality in the brothel scene – where, again, SD find temporary peace. The challenge for the artist is to be able to embrace himself, even when he feels that he has sinned. Stephen’s epiphany in this chapter is the reawakening of his sense of wonder and ecstasy.

21. Stephen at the Brothels

22. Chapter Three • Chapter Three: SD’s reliance upon precise church doctrine to relieve him of guilt is turned upside down during Father Arnell’s addresses – the images of his soul being evaporated into hell represent the next crisis – at first, when he experiences the afterglow of confession, SD is a peace; however, it is a temporary peace. Peake argues that SD’s experience is, in fact, useful: “this is the refining fire through which his soul must pass in order that its sensual desires should be given a new direction – that the impulse of his lust should be transformed into the spiritual impulse of the artist.”

23. Stephen at Ringsend (Today’s Version)

24. Chapter Four • Chapter Four: SD enters into a period of fanatical religious isolation, the crisis of which is the director’s offer to SD of the life of a priest. SD realizes that the allure of secret knowledge and power will only serve his vanity; “His destiny was to be elusive of social or religious orders…. He was destined to learn his own wisdom apart from others or to learn the wisdom of others himself wandering among the snares of the world.” His HUGE Epiphany includes the images of death & rebirth that are found throughout the text: “His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her graveclothes…. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings…” – SD’s Dante moment.

25. Stephen at University College, Dublin

26. Chapter Five • Chapter Five: all the features of the artist as a young man, shaped and formed by the interaction of his nature and his environment, are assembled and molded into a portrait – Peake. • SD steers his way through opposites in this chapter, the sordid family life vs. the beautiful morning, for example. He become noncommital – the “static” artist. However, does he cut the ties in the way we think he might?

27. Stephen’s Philosophical Arguments • Aesthetic discussion of how an image is recreated in art: • The image “must be set between the mind of the artist himself and the mind of others” • Lyrical: artist presents the image in relation to himself (Purely Personal) • Epical: artist presents the image in relation to himself and others (The Personality of the Artist Flows Around the Person and the Action) • Dramatic: artist presents his image in immediate relation to others (The Personality of the Artist Refines Itself Out of Existence – Impersonalizes Itself.”)

28. Stephen’s Philosophical Arguments • “Three things are needed for beauty: wholeness, harmony, and radiance” • Wholeness: the mind separates the image from all which it is not • Harmony: the mind apprehends the balance of all its parts • Radiance: the mind apprehends its uniqueness – its beauty • SD then relates this to the artist’s epiphany – and his/her ability to communicate a beauty that is both individual and universal