Joyce, James - Life (6)

James Joyce is the most important representative of the psychological modern novel. In his works we can find some novelty: we have no plot, the time changed, the impersonality of the author because we have the narrator's the disappearance and the characters are presented from the inside them in fact they introduced themselves, we have also no moral aim and no realism. The theme changed from reality to characters' mind so with the stream of consciousness and the consequence we have also a change in the narrative technique. He was born in Dublin in a middle class family and he was educated in a Jesuit school, for this and for other reasons he refuses his country because he feels a cosmopolitan man. At the age of 20 he makes an European tour where he settled in different cities like Rome and Trieste (place where he met Italo Svevo) and Paris. He is a rebel among rebel and the first form of rebellion is that he decided to do this European tour because he considered Dublin a limited city, a provincial place; the second form of rebellion regards the religion indeed he fells oppressed by the Jesuit education and by his parents that refuses that their son becomes an artist. When he was quite old he became blind. For understanding his works it was necessary to listen them and they should be read aloud.
The only setting in place in all his novels is Dublin, that is the center of the paralysis. He know everything of this city and in his novels is the symbol of universal city because it could be whatever city that he knew well. So the Dublin presented by Joyce is not static but a montage of the city explored by different points of view simultaneously.