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Life Born in Dublin, Joyce grew up in Ireland and is considered the quintessential Irish writer, yet he often rejected his homeland. He spent most of his adult life living on the European continent, obsessing over Ireland while creating in Ulysses a portrait of Irish life as experienced by Dublin's residents during one particular day, June 16, 1904. Ulysses The novel Ulysses, which he began writing in 1914, is loosely based on the epic poem by Homer, The Odyssey In the Greek classic, the protagonist Odysseus is a king and a great hero who is wandering homeward following the Trojan War. In Ulysses (the Latin name for Odysseus), a Dublin advertising salesman named Leopold Bloom. spends atypical day traveling about the city. Ulysses has become known for Joyce's use of stream of consciousness, and interior monologues. The novel is also remarkable for Joyce's use of music throughout and for his sense of humor, as wordplay and parody are employed throughout the text. Excerpts From Ulysses: His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed. Men, men, men. Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however. Literary Style and Themes Joyce's writing style evolved over time, and each of his major works can be said to have its own distinct style. But, in general his writings are marked with a remarkable attention to language an innovative use of symbolism, and the use of interior monologue to portray the thoughts and feelings of a character. Most Common Literary Approaches: + Formalism + Marxist Theory + Structuralism + Deconstruction + Post Colonial Theory + Gender /Queer Theories A FEMINIST READING OF CINDERELLA + As a single, young woman, Cinderella is without means or opportunity because she is unattached to a father or a husband. + It is only through the magic of a fairy godmother that she can be made presentable and meet the prince and he is the only means of her escaping her plight. +What skills does she have? She is beautiful, can sing well, and is kind. These are highlighted as the desirable qualities in a woman (hence, her UGLY, UNTALENTED, stepsisters who are portrayed as undesirable). Mrs. Warren's Profession Synopsis The story centres on the relationship between Mrs. Warren, a middle-aged woman, and her Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie. Mrs. Warren, the heroine of the play, comes from a poor family. After working for some time as a waitress and bar-maid, she becomes a prostitute and then a part-owner and manager of a chain of brothels in different capitals of central Europe. Mrs. Warren's daughter, Vivie, is brought up and educated in a very moral atmosphere. Upon her graduation from Cambridge, she returns home. As the play opens on a summer afternoon, Vivie is reading until she is interrupted by her mother's friend Mr. Praed, a middle-aged gentleman. They have a conversation and Vivie asks Praed whether he thinks she will get along with her mother, with whom she has spent little time. Vivie admits that she knows little about her mother's life, which clearly embarrasses Praed. Vivie begins to grow suspicious about her mother as she notes Praed's unease. Later Vivie accidentally discovers the source of her mother's income. She talks with her mother, makes a brief reconciliation with her and forgives her when Mrs. Warren explains her impoverished youth that originally led her into prostitution. However, Mrs. Warren and her business partner Sir George Crofts, an old aristocrat, unscrupulously continue their earning a fortune by way of dirty exploitation and immorality. Vivie then gets disgusted more than ever and ultimately breaks away from her mother, living an independent life and earning her living by honest work. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Joseph Conrad's name in full was Teodor Josef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski. He was born on December 3, 1857, in Berdichev in Russian Poland. His parents were patriots for Polish independence from Russia. In 1862 Conrad's father was exiled to Siberia on suspicion of plotting against the Russian government. After the death of his mother in 1865, Conrad spent his youth with several different relatives in different places, and Conrad never again saw his father. Conrad could speak and read French, and he read Shakespeare, Dickens, and Fenimore Cooper in translation. From an early age Conrad was fascinated by the sea. In 1874 he joined the crew of a French ship and spent the next twenty years as a sailor. In 1878 he signed on to an English ship, and eight years later he became a British subject. In 1890, he took command of a steamship in the Belgian Congo and began to fulfill his boyhood dream of traveling to the Congo River. His experiences in the Congo came out in Heart of Darkness. III-health stopped Conrad's seamanship and he started writing. He did not begin to learn English until he was twenty-one years old; yet before he was forty he had already completed his first English novel, Almayer's Folly (1895). Heart of Darkness appeared in 1899 as a three-part series in a magazine and has become his best-known work. Lord Jim (1899-1900), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907) are some of his novels. Conrad died of heart failure on August 3, 1924. He was buried in Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury under his original Polish surname, Korzeniowski. Conrad is noted for his complex narratives and formal experiments, especially in point of view and temporal shift. He is also suded for his account of imperialism, colonialism, depiction of man in his inner battles with good and evil when caught in extreme conditions. Heart of Darkness Synopsis Five sailors aboard a ship on the river Thames are waiting for the tide to turn. One of them, Marlow, begins telling the story of a job he took in Africa. Through the help of his aunt, Marlow got the job as a riverboat captain with a Belgian company operating in the Congo. He travels to Africa and up the Congo River. He arrives at the Central Station and finds that his steamship has been sunk. He has to wait for months for it to be repaired. On their voyage up the river, Marlow and his crew are attacked by the natives. They finally arrive at Kurtz's Inner Station. Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has collected ivory in brutal ways. Human skulls adorn his fence posts. But he is quite ill. Before he dies, he gives Marlow a pamphlet on civilizing the savages. The pamphlet ends with "Exterminate all the brutes!" When he dies, his last words are "The horror! The horror!" Marlow returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz's fiancée a year later. She is still in mourning and demands to know Kurtz's last words upon death. Marlow lies to her that they were her name rather than "The horror! The horror!". The story ends with the waiting scene on the Thames and says the boat seems to be drifting into the heart of the darkness. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin on the 13th of June 1865 to an Anglo-Irish Protestant family. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. His mother was from a wealthy Sligo family. His early years were spent between Dublin, London and Sligo. From 1884 to 1886, he attended the Metropolitan School of Art, where he was inspired by mysticism. He was opposed to the urban and industrial harshness and the philistinism of contemporary English culture. He associated Protestantism with materialism, and rejected the Newtonian mechanistic worldview. His youth was passed during the upsurge of Irish nationalist movement led by Parnell. His first significant poem was a fantasy work and his first solo publication was Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (1886). This was followed by The Wanderings of Disin and Other Poems (1889). In 1889 Yeats met and fell in love with Maud Gonne, an actress and Irish revolutionary. From 1889 to 1899, he was a leading member of the Aesthetic Movement in London. His major verse in this period includes Crossways (1889), The Rose (1893), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). In 1899, Yeats established the Irish Literary Theatre to perform Celtic and Irish plays. Until 1909, he served as the manager and wrote for the theatre plays such as Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907). In the Seven Woods (1903) was his only volume of verse during this period. After 1910, his dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical style. He wrote for small audiences and experimented with masks, dance, and music. In poetry he began to use a language that was harder and more physical than his earlier work. This is shown in The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). Yeats achieved a renewal of inspiration and a perfecting of technique after 1919. The Wild Swans at Coole came out in 1919, followed by Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921). In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and greater poems were still to come. They include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1933). In 1917, Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees. He died in Roquebrune, France on January 28, 1939. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Virginia Woolf was born at Hyde Park Gate to Sir Leslie Stephen, a famous scholar, historian and literary critic. Her brothers went to excellent schools, including Cambridge University, but Virginia and her sister grew up at home, educating themselves in their father's library. Such discrepancy between the treatment of men and women was an issue for Virginia all her life. She was sensitive, and attempted to commit suicide after her parents' deaths. She took am active role in the feminist movement, demanding suffrage. When she began to write, she often used the experiences and impressions in her early life in her novels. In 1907 the family moved to Bloomsbury, where the famous "Bloomsbury Group" got started, which was to become a favourite place for intellectuals. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, who encouraged her to write fiction and helped her by editing her work. Her first novel, The Voyage Out was published in 1915, followed by Night and Day in 1919. She began experimenting with new ways of writing in Jacob's Room (1922), which turned out to be unsuccessful. However, she did not give up. The year 1925 witnessed the publication of Mrs. Dalloway, her first completely successful attempt of experiment with new literary techniques. Her second success To the Lighthouse appeared in 1927, in which she persisted in polishing her techniques and created some memorable characters. The novel is generally regarded as one of her masterpieces for its special style that, while limiting the story to a short span of time, combines a stream of consciousness with the accumulation of many details and thus creates a strong feeling of intensity that is common in her writing. The year 1928 saw the publication of Orlando, a semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of her intimate friend Vita Sackville-West. Woolf continued her experiments with fiction, being particularly interested in the passage of time. The Waves appeared in 1931, in which she pained herself much in order to depict characters in the context of time by philosophically expanding the use of the stream of consciousness. The six characters of the book represent respectively different types of consciousness and each of their stream of consciousness from childhood to old age is traced for the purpose of demonstrating various ages of man rather than showing the lives of individuals. The Years made its appearance in 1937, in which Woolf examined other ways in which people experience time. In 1940, her last book, Between the Acts, was published. Like Mrs. Dalloway, the action of the novel takes place in one day, but by placing omens of the Second World War in the scenes of a village play that records England's history, Woolf expands the reader's consciousness of time into the past and future while telling the events of a single day in the present. Woolf was a prolific writer. Her other works include biographies, short stories, critical studies of literature and British society, a play and other autobiographical writings and diaries. All her writings help make her one of the greatest innovative novelists and essayists of the 20th century. On 28 March 1941, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse near her home. The suicide was the unfortunate culmination of several of her mental breakdowns and her recurring depressions ever since her early years' unhappy experiences. Mrs. Dalloway Synopsis Clarissa Dalloway, wife of Richard Dalloway MP, sets off on a June morning to buy flowers for her evening party. She enjoys her day in the city and meets Hugh Whitbread, a court official. She continues her shopping and sees a luxurious limousine when she is in a flower shop. She makes some random speculations concerning the car. Then the sights and sounds of the lively city of London remind her of many things: her youth, the days before her marriage, her husband, her daughter Elizabeth. Her thoughts go on about her childhood friend Sally and her childhood when she loved Richard Dalloway and Peter Walsh. The former is now her husband and the latter has left for India and marries there. The novel goes astray to tell the story about Septimus Smith who was once a war hero and who, feeling lost and abandoned, somehow attempts to commit suicide. In the meantime, Mrs. Dalloway returns home only to find her husband away from home, having lunch with Lady Bruton, whom Mrs. Dalloway dislikes. Later, the divorced Peter Walsh pays her a surprise visit and Mrs. Dalloway invites him to the party. The party turns out to be a great success. The Prime Minister comes, as do many celebrities. Peter is there, chatting warmly with Sally, now Lady Rossetter. Later, Sir William Bradshaw, the wealthy and distinguished psychiatrist, and his wife come. The Bradshaws explain that they are late because one of Bradshaw's patients committed suicide. The patient is Septimus Smith. Though he is completely unknown to Mrs. Dalloway, his suicide touches her and brings her into reminiscences of her early days and love, lost in reflecting upon the question of "to be or not to be". Peter and Sally go on commenting on Clarissa and Richard and wondering whether they are happy together. As Sally leaves to talk with Richard, a strange feeling seizes Peter. He suddenly realizes that, even after all these years, he is still deep in love with Clarissa. James Joyce (1882-1941) James Joyce, one of the greatest and most original novelists in the 20th century, was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882. The family was quite well-off at first, but collapsed into poverty. Joyce's parents were religious Catholics like most Irish people, and he was sent to Catholic schools, where he experienced a phase of religious enthusiasm. With the intention of becoming a priest, he entered Dublin's University College where he studied modern languages and spent his spare time reading books forbidden by the Catholic Church. He refused to take part in the nationalist movement, but became passionately interested in literature. He received his degree in 1902 and went to Paris, returning the next summer when his mother was dying. By this time he had lost his faith in religion and was an ardent antiCatholic. He exiled himself to Europe. Although all his books are about Dublin and Dubliners, he returned to Ireland only for brief visits. From 1904 to 1914, Joyce earned his living by teaching in Switzerland and Italy. After that, his life was marked by continual struggles to publish his works, and he had to rely on wealthy patrons for financial support. He settled down in Paris in 1920, and wrote his books there until the Second World War broke out. The German occupation of France forced him and his wife to flee to Switzerland, but she died in Zurich only a few weeks after their arrival. Joyce's great literary works include Dubliners (1914), a linked collection of 15 short stories about the hard life of poor people in Dublin; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a novel which is largely autobiographical, about a boy growing up in Dublin; Ulysses (1922), and Finnegan's Wake (1939), a long, extremely difficult book, written in many languages, full of puns, layers of symbolism, linguistic gymnastics and deep, complicated philosophy. Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man deal with the life of Ireland that he rejected when he went to live in exile. He treats the subject with deep psychological insight. In Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, he tries to understand and explain the development of an artist and the workings of the human mind. His astonishing way of constructing a novel, his frank portrayal of human nature, his complete command of English, and his unique synthesis of realism, the "stream of consciousness," and symbolism have made him one of the outstanding influences on literature in the 20th century. Joyce died in Zurich on January 13, 1941, as the result of an undiagnosed duodenal ulcer. Ulysses Synopsis Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but was banned in England for its alleged obscenity until 1936. It is an account of a man's life in one day (June 16, 1904) in Dublin, and concerns the lives of a few citizens of Dublin. There are three major characters in the novel: Leopold Bloom, a Jew of Hungarian origin living in Dublin, his wife, Molly Bloom, and StephenDedalus. The novel is divided into 18 episodes, each of which corresponds to one in The Odyssey, though not in the same order. The first three episodes are chiefly concerned with Dedalus. The next 14 episodes are mainly about Leopold Bloom, Joyce's modern version of Ulysses. The last one is Molly's monologue. The plot follows the wanderings of Stephen and Bloom through Dublin, and their eventual meeting. Bloom's roaming about makes up the major part of the novel. In the course of the story, a public bath, a funeral, a newspaper office, a library, a maternity hospital, a brothel and public houses are visited. A number of other Dublin scenes and characters are introduced. Interspersed throughout the novel are religious, historical, literary, and geographical allusions, word games, and many-sided puns. Thus, ordinary events of the story are soaked with the copious significance to be found in an epic. D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) David Herbert Richards Lawrence, one of the most original and controversial writers of the early 20th century, was born in 1885 in the Nottinghamshire coalfield community of Eastwood. His father was a coalminer, and his mother was a school teacher who despised her uneducated and frequently drunken husband. She forged an emotionally restrictive link with her son which was largely accountable for his later inadequacy in intimate relationship with women, and for the sexual torments to which in imagination he was to subject many of his fictional characters. As a boy, Lawrence showed exceptional talent and was the first from his school to win a scholarship to Nottingham High School. He had been a pupil-teacher at a school in Eastwood, where he distinguished himself in the entrance examinations for a teacher training course at Nottingham University College. He began the two-year course in September 1906, and it was during this period that he entered a relationship with Jessie Chambers of Haggs Farm, who appears in Sons and Lovers as Miriam. At about this time, he began his first serious literary efforts, in the form of poems, stories and a novel that was later to become The White Peacock (1910). He made his debut in the London literary world with the publication of a group of poems in the English Review, and began his second and third novels, the latter of which was entitled Paul Morel (later Sons and Lovers). In 1910, Lawrence's mother died of cancer. Lawrence was devastated and he described the next few months as his "sick year", which became a major turning point in his life. In November 1911, pneumonia struck once again. After the recovery, he abandoned his teaching and became a fulltime author. Lawrence's life after the outbreak of the First World War was one of his darkest times. The Rainbow (1915) was suppressed after an investigation into its alleged obscenity. His wife being a German, they were suspected as spies in wartime Englan On top of all this,poverty and ill-health brought Lawrence close to despair. Despite all these difficulties, he finished Women in Love, in which he explores the destructive features of contemporary civilization through the characters' reflections upon the value of arts, politics, economics, friendship and marriage. This novel is a bleak, bitter vision of humanity. It is impossible for such a book to be published in wartime conditions. It was not published until 1920, and is now recognized as an English classic. In 1917, Lawrence was forced to leave Comwall and shift from address to address by poverty. After the traumatic experience of the war years, he began what he termed his "savage pilgrimage" of voluntary exile, which took him to Australia, Italy, Sri Lanka, North America, Mexico and France. In 1926, he returned to Europe and published Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1928. The book is his last major and probably most controversial novel. The novel expresses Lawrence's bitterness towards industrialization and his hope that the decaying civilization could be healed by adopting a new type of relationship between men and women. Lawrence died of complications from tuberculosis in France on March 2, 1930, at the age of 44. Sons and Lovers Synopsis Gertrude Morel's husband is an irresponsible collier and a drunkard. She has attempted to change him, but failed. As a result, she devotes all her time and energy to her children, William, Annie, Paul and Arthur. She is happiest when she is with them. As her sons grow up, she rejoices that she alone has made them, but this joy is soon shattered by the death of William. The mother then pins all her hopes on her second son, Paul. Unlike William, Paul has no wish to look further than his home and his painting. His mother even has to nurse him through the interview for his first job, which makes him really awkward. At this stage in Paul's life, he and his mother fully tend to each other's needs. But as Paul grows up, Mrs. Morel's only joy in life is threatened by her son's friendship with a local girl, Miriam. Her jealousy is intense, and she cannot help waiting up for Paul's return from his dates with Miriam. Paul brims over withsuppressed passion and guilt. Later, he develops a relationship with a married woman, Clara Dawes. Clara is five years older, but a beautiful woman. Paul cannot bring himself to marry her if she is not free. He comes to realize that his mother is the only woman to whom he can turn for complete understanding and love. On one hand, Paul continues to devote much of his time and attention to making his mother happy. On the other hand, his relationship with Clara brings her further distress. Paul begins to see Miriam again, but their relationship is still unsatisfactory. He again turns to Clara as he finds in her an outlet for his unknown desires. It is revealed that Mrs. Morel has cancer. Paul is tortured by his mother's pain. One night he gives her an overdose of morphine, and she dies the next day. Left alone, he feels that his own life has ended with the death of his mother. After a lengthy inner struggle, he is able to set out to make his own life anew. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) T. S. Eliot, an American-born English poet, playwright and literary critic, is best known for his The Waste Land (1922), which is universally accepted as a landmark in modernist literature. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, into distinguished family, his mother being a good poet and his father a successful businessman. He received education at Harvard University and Oxford University. He was quite versatile and familiar with French, Italian, English literature, as well as Sanskrit. In 1915 Eliot settled in London and eventually became a naturalized British citizen in 1927. It was during this time that Pound encouraged him, helped him edit and publish his poems. In 1915 Eliot published his first important poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It is a symbolist poem in the form of dramatic monologue, and describes the central figure Prufrock, a man lacking in courage and incapable of any action. Troubled and disillusioned, Prufrock represents a generation who suffered from mental problems and felt disoriented. In 1917 his first small volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published. In 1922 Eliot founded a new literary journal, the Criterion, which is now recognized as one of the most outstanding twentieth-century periodicals. After 1922 his efforts were focused on literary criticism. His relatively conservative critical essays are as influential as his poetry. The famous essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and essays on Metaphysical poets give readers a new perspective for understanding poetry. T. S. Eliot is also a notable playwright. He wrote seven plays, among which Four Quartets (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Cocktail Party (1949) are the bestknown. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948 and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. He died in 1965. |
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