Derek Attridge - Reading Joyce Social, economic & political transformations led to a newly-formed system of representing the world

through language, using so called Joycean technique, such as: parody, pastiche, self-referentiality, fragmentation of word and image, open-ended narrative and multiple p.o.v. Inexhaustibility of his work multiple starting and ending point for interpretation The 4th story in Dubliners 1st published under the pseudonym Stephen Daedalus Stylistically the writing is pretty unremarkable, the language is not your usual literary register BUT it is completely transparent, a truth-telling story whose sole aim is to convey as convincinglt as possible the actuality of a specific, though presumably imagined, personal experience -> rather, the content which we are accustomed to thinking of as the raison detre of fiction) serves as a vehicle for the manner of telling, the slow release of information, the hints and the presuppositions that we are invited to elaborate on, the rhythm of mental deliberation that propels the narrative forward, and our present concern the controlled language that through its very sparseness possesses a hair-trigger suggestiveness -> he shows how unstable the relationship between content and form is The inconclusiveness of the writing in inescapable from because it is built into the story we can never know if evelines hopes for a better life are valid or baseless The readers enjoyment lies in identifying this language as language normally excluded from literature, but functioning here just as efficiently as the most elaborate of styles to suggest with immense precision a mind, a social milieu, a series of emotions. The pleasure is in the precision, rather that what it is precise about. Sometimes, the inner monologue is vague in terms of whose voice is it Eveline talks basic English language, no fancy words, but there are times when such comments are made might this be Joyces voice or the effect that the social context and desires of Eveline has on her subconscious and thus, her language? The Bohemian Girl material reference, smtg Eveline might want to be, but certainly is not as proof comes the visit to the theatre with Frank that is a rehearsal of the life she hopes to have with frank Joyce double task (like or realistic/naturalist writers): Creating the impression of reality conveyed through renderind the exact thoughts of the characters Making the reader an active part by asking of him to piece together the pieces of the puzzle in order to understand The demands of naturalism a degree of incoherence, a completely non-literary style a minimum of info since the character doesn t have to state things she/he already knows (also happening in Ulysses when we gradually find out about the dead son, the father that hanged himself, though references are made beforehand it s like he is trying to enduce into readers the same epiphanies/revelations that his characters have) Connections between stories in Dubliners and episodes in Ulysses:

 Maria in `Clay` might provide a clues as to what awaits Eveline when trying to leave Dublin Maria also sings a song from The Bohemian Girl The Nausicaa episode in Ulysses is an elaboration of Eveline, building fantasies around some stranger whom she interprets in the terms of the romantic stories she had read

CHRISTOPHER BUTLER - Joyce the modernist Joyce was a Nietzschean N. Helped sustain his opposition to those totalizing religious and philosophical frameworks characteristic of the 19th century burgeoisie `My mind rejects the whole present social and Christianity` - says Joyce in his letters to Nora S. Daedalus - `fond of saying that the absolute is dead` Symptoms in Joyces work - pragmatism, pluralism and most typical for modernist sceptical irony The `scrupulous meanness ` in Dubliners = seeing things as they really are: In realism you get down to facts on which the world is based; that sudden reality which smashes romanticism into a pulp(...) if we lived down to fact, as primitive man had to do, we would be better off. That is what we were made for. Nature is quite unromantic. It is we who put romance into her, which is a false attitude, an egotism, absurd like all egotism. In Ulysses i tried to keep close to fact. J.J. Joyces attitude to the modernist climate comes from his esentially solitary (and egotistical) expertientialism, and from our senses of the ideological risks it ran. Ulysses he had set himself the task of writing a book from 18 diff. p.o.v. and in as many styles unknows to his fellow tradesmen leading to an esentially relativist attitude towards the truthful depiction of reality He uses modernist techniques to adopt a series of rhetorical masks which make us doubt the authority of any particular style. The various methods used in Ulysses are, thus, different but not definitive ways of filtering and ordering experience. Although Joyce obeys the underlying casual necessities of narratives & is as concerned with accuracy as Proust, he also makes us see his history of a day within a number of stylistic frameworks, which are all relative to one another, and which often disrupt the conventions of word formation and syntax this is the beginning of Joyces revolution of the word, completed in Fs Wake. Matthew Arnold `modern times find themselves with an immense system of institutions, established facts, acredited dogmas, customes, rules, which have come to them from past times they feel like this system is not of their own creation, that it does not correspond to their wants, that it is customary, not rational. The awakening of this sense is the awakening of the modern spirit.` Modernist are revolutionary in the sense that they take what has already been stated and created in matter of art and recreate it, expand it, perfect it, inventing radically new languages for art the complete recreative and parodic mastery of previous traditions for instance, before Ulysses, Joyce writes Dubliners in a very Chekhovian manner, and The Dead is very Symbolist and, also, Ibsenic. Important in joycean writings: A distinctive reinvention of Symbolist experience through his epiphanies *

* a sudden spiritual transformation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself Reviving and immeasurably extended the presentation of the `stream of consciousness`, previously found in Edouard Dujardin There are all sorts of reflected influences in Ulysses cubism, futurism, simultaneism, dadaism etc. -> Joyce was attached to none of these various schools Ulysses & Freud Nausicaa - `the unveiling of the subconscious in the Freudian manner` `every action and reaction of Blooms psychology is laid bare with Freudian nastiness & `much of the action in Ulysses is subconscious` Ulysses = `a volume of dream interpretatins by Freud` Joyce himself claimed going back to the Catholicism he had previously rejected that he preferred the confessional as a mode of self-revelation

GARRY LEONARD - Dubliners It could be read like `if someone had made a two-hour film by putting the camera on a tripod and letting it run, and then brought the result directly to the screen with no editing 1. The Sisters Maybe Father Flynn sinned when he taught the boy the Catholic Mass Maybe the sisters could have saved him (otherwise why the name?) Maybe there was smtg wrong with the narrator who becomes so self-conscious that he doesnt want to eat crackers at Father Flynns wake for fear of embarassement The 3 words that he hates: gnonom (some kind of a riddle or, how he encounters it a geometric form of a parallelogram with a missing corner*), simony (the selling of smtg with spiritual value for moral gain), paralysis how much of what he doesnt know is nonetheless affecting him? * is the narrator the missing corner, feeling alone and apart from his family? His uncle was always telling him to `box his corner and, indeed, he is sitting in a corner when he refuses to take the crackers from Eliza The thing with the story ta daaaam us, readers, dont seem to get whats going on because the boy doesnt either. the boy tries to connect the dots, to form a narrative out of apparently unrelated details. Joyce refuses to be an omniscient narrator because the 20th century is anything but an Age of Faith, it is an age of deep incertitude with an accompanying deep suspicion of all meta-narratives Father Flynn gets into a crisis the loss of faith, the discovery of the empty chalice maybe he passed the crisis onto the boy Joyce praises Ibsens characters for being portrayed in a way that does not preach about the meaning of life, but invites the reader to observe closely and speculate in order to piece the parts and to see wherever the writing is fainter or less legible

In the beginning the boys assumption that he would know if F.F. was dead because there would be 2 lighted candles at the head of his corpse; he goes past the window night by night After a long dread about the fascination F.F. exercited upon him he was fearful by the idea of F.F. being dead but yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work - here is the invitation and the warning of Dubliners: come closer, look for where it fades, where it is illegible, but know that what remains unsaid is often what we fear to say, or even think, and yet, at the same time, might want to hear shouted aloud the longing and the fear that accompanies genuine insight unadulterated by self-delusion or wishful thinking: deadly work, indeed, but perhaps an antidote to the moral paralysis identified as one of the subjects of Js work. One of the dynamics of Js work: adding, altering, amending what he initially wrote, seeking a greater and greater degree of subtlety and finesse. 2. Araby The conclusion the boy realizez that he doesnt have enough money to buy a present for Mangans sister a convergence of the political (the shop girl is English, implying that the good themselves are another way for England to profit from the chronically dissatisfied citizens of colonial Ireland), the personal (seeing the shop girl flirting with her 2 admirers he realises he hasnt done anything similar regarding Mangans sister, hence the girl thinks nothing about him), the familial (he is late because his uncle was late, he constantly tries to escape the tangled web of animosity and alcohol), the textual (even if hes unaware of it, his journey follows the pattern of the search for the Holy Grail) and the religious (The Bazaar = a profit-driven, indifferent Church) The Joycean epiphany does not so much confirm a truth as disrupt what one has grown comfortable accepting as true 3. A Little Cloud the epiphany Little Chandler returns home after his conversation with Gallaher to find he hates his furniture, his wife, his marriage, his infant son for robbing him of the chance to be an acknowledged poet. But is this true? Maybe he didnt write any poetry because this allows him to continue fantasizing that he one day will He is trying to make himself feel more important that he actually is thats why he wants to meet Little Chandler . But why does Little Chandler meet him while trying to be in a state of denial, fooling himself that their friendship is valuable? Because, like the narrator in Araby and Maria in Clay, he uses almost constant fantasy to insulate himself from the reality of his life as he is living it. Joyces intention in Dubliners - `to write a chapter of the moral history of my country 4. Eveline - A simple anti-emigration propagandist fiction but, in fact, interogates the terms and functions of the nationalist propaganda it supposedly embodies In the end, Eveline cannot leave Ireland she returns to an alcoholic father that beats her and a thankless exhausting job where her salary is not even her own. Reason for not leaving the promise that she had made to her mother not to leave this place

Frank = the stock seducere in the anti-emigration tales The meaning of the tale: people do not stay in London because they discover the wonder of doing so, but because theyre trapped (one of the ways theyre trapped is the ideology of a pure and lovely Ireland Joyces epiphanies the rearrangement of a fantasized reality into an actual one may be intended as an antidote to moments where all the diffcult realities in Ireland are ignored and replaced by a pleasant image of an Irish lass waving from her cottage window at her man happily tilling the ground with his hoe, only pausing to acknowledge her adoring gaze 5. Clay A game is recounted where three saucers are placed on a table and the blindfolded player lowers her hand