Crisis, Modernism and Joyce's Portrait of Dublin

Crisis and Modernism

It is a period of crisis due to the scientific progress and new views of man and of the of the universe, spread through the society. The movement is known as modernism or age of anxiety. The authors start rejecting the traditional conventions and focus on the individual.
The analysis of the psychology of the human’s mind is at the center of every story. The unconscious controls our impulses. Modernism also focused on the idea of the decay, the lack of values and certainties and it focused also on the individual’s inner world and his relationship with society. It is a period of new scientific discoveries that introduced the idea of:

• relativity = the isn’t only one perspective but many. The truth is fragmentated.
• subjectivity = there is a focus on the individual, especially their inner life.

Relativity and Subjectivity

The major stylistic device is Human beings are seen as paralyzedby the values of the society and unable to change. What artist can do is just to make people aware of its conditions.
He was born in Dublin in 1882 and studied languages at University college in Dublin. His interest was for a broader European culture and this led him to think of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. In his novels he gives the reader a realistic portrait of Dublin but from the point of view of an European. He moved to Paris but then came back to Dublin. In 1905 he moved to Trieste where he became friend with Italo Svevo. In the same year he finished his main work ‘Dubliners’, published in 1914. Because of financial issues he moved to Zurich in 1915 and then to Paris in 1920, where he published Ulysses. In 1940 when France was occupied by Nazis he moved back to Zurich where he died, one year later.

Joyce was a modernist author. The facts are explored from different points of view simultaneously and are presented as clues, fragmentation of clues. His stories open up in medias res, with the analysis of a particular moment. The portrait of the character is based on the introspection thanks to the inner monologue. Time is subjective, leading to psychological change.

Portraits of Dublin

It consists of 15 short stories that are all set in Dublin. His effort was to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives. He resorts to the impersonal narrator. The stories are arranged in 4 groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life.

He portrays Dublin as a cruel city where compassion for others doesn’t exist. Characters are portrayed as paralyzed and afflicted people, because they are unable to change and they can’t make decisions. He describes a time of crisis and uncertainty. To gain realism he uses symbols to point out facts and analyzes the particular. He also employs the epiphany technique, a sudden realization caused by an external object.