Dubliners:How is it related to Modernism?

In "Two Gallants," the sixth short story in the Dubliners collection, James Joyce is especially careful and crafty in his opening paragraph. Even the most cursory of readings exposes repetition, alliteration, and a clear structure within just these nine lines. The question remains, though, as to what the beginning of "Two Gallants" contributes to the meaning and impact of Joyce's work, both for the isolated story itself and for Dubliners as a whole. The construction, style, and word choice of this opening, in the context of the story and the collection, all point to one of Joyce's most prevalent implicit judgments: that the people of Ireland refuse to make any effort toward positive change for themselves.

James Joyce emerged as a radical new narrative writer in modern times. Joyce conveyed this new writing style through his stylistic devices such as the stream of consciousness, and a complex set of mythic parallels and literary parodies. This mythic parallel is called an epiphany. “The Dead” by Joyce was written as a part of Joyce’s collection called “The Dubliners”. Joyce’s influence behind writing the short story was all around him. The growing nationalist Irish movement around Dublin, Ireland greatly influences Joyce’s inspiration for writing “The Dubliners”. Joyce attempted to create an original portrayal of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The historical

The setting of the story, Dublin, has been written in such a way that only

James Joyce wrote Dubliners to portray Dublin at the turn of the early 20th century. In Dubliners, faith and reason are represented using dark images and symbols. James Joyce uses these symbols to show the negative side of Dublin. In “The Sisters,” “The Boarding House,” and “The Dead” dark is expressed in many ways. James Joyce uses the light and dark form of symbolism in his imagination to make his stories come to life.

Dubliners (1914), by James Joyce (1882-1941) is a collection of short stories representing his home city at the start of the 20th century. Joyce 's work ‘was written between 1904 and 1907 ' (Haslam and Hooper, 2012, p. 13). The novel consists of fifteen stories; each one unfolds lives of the different lower middle-strata. Joyce wanted to convey something definite about Dublin and Irish society.

Joyce's modernistic view of Dublin society permeates all of his writings. The Irish experiences account for a large portion of Joyce's writings. Stephen Dedalus is sometimes Joyce's pseudonym and represents Joyce and his life in Joyce's works. Joyce plays a crucial role in the modernist movement in literature. Some of the well known innovative techniques used by Joyce are symbolism, realism and stream-of consciousness. James Joyce's writings contain autobiographical matter and display his view of life in Dublin, Ireland with the use of symbolism, realism, and stream-of consciousness.

The birth of the modernist movement in American literature was the result of the post-World War I social breakdown. Writers adopted a disjointed fragmented style of writing that rebelled against traditional literature. One such writer is William Faulkner, whose individual style is characterized by his use of “stream of consciousness” and writing from multiple points of view.

Firstly, Joyce incorporates multiple figures of speech and elements of design to express a purpose through the events that occur in the story. As mentioned before, this story is written in first person perspective of a boy who lives with his aunt and uncle. The perspective best allows readers to understand what this boy encounters every day and his opinion on certain topics. Furthermore, it also allows readers to perceive the feelings this boy has for a girl. For example, the author mentions the boy playing and says, “The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses…” (Joyce, 1). This quote highlights the lively and childish fun the boy has with his friends.

The mistrust of the world which is at the center of modernism can be attributed to the world wars and the psychological effect that it had on the individual. The horrors and violence altered public perceptions of life, a change that is evident within writers of the time period. The focus of writing shifted from the outward world to inner thoughts and feelings and overall representation of an individual’s stream of consciousness which are themes associated with modern text. In “Impact of Modernism”, focuses on the idea that world needed new outlets for expression and in finding them rejected the tradition that was already there with the quote, “Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover radically new ways of making art.” (Impact) .The world no longer had the beauty it once did so a a discovery of new arts were needed. The mind of an individual became that new found inspiration and beauty that modern writers needed and for that reason it was one of the main focuses of modern

Every story, poem, play, and any piece of literature has at least one of many literary devices in common. Theme remains a constant part of every literary artwork. Modernism literature has themes that touch The Great Depression, the Harlem Renaissance, and post-World War 1 realism. Modernism began in 1915 right after the first World War; writers became jaded and bitter with experience. These themes are expressed in “A Dream Deferred’’ by Langston Hughes, “A Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, and “On a Play Twice Seen” by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Dubliners is a collection of short stories written by James Joyce detailing the lives of many seemingly average characters from Dublin during the early twentieth century. Throughout all of Dubliners, Joyce gives the protagonist of every story a sort of epiphany that leads them to realize the source of their unhappiness, oftentimes, the characters choose to do nothing about it. Farrington, the protagonist in the short story “Counterparts,” and Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist in “The Dead,” are two very different characters. Joyce uses this steep contrast between Farrington and Gabriel to argue about the circle of life and its routineness, and how happy endings are not common or to be expected no matter the circumstance.

Two major motifs reappearing throughout the stories in Dubliners are the Messianic and Trinity motifs. Joyce seems to have conceived Dubliners as his offering of a sacred book to the Irish Literary Movement’s attempts to spiritually arouse Ireland so that she might throw off the chains binding her to her oppressor, England. Joyce’s sacred book, however, does not flatter his countrymen by strengthening their claims to be chosen of people of the modern world and not to be made in the heroic image of the mythical-historical Cuchulain; rather, it allows them to take a good look at themselves in a “nicely polished looking-glass” so that they might see the pretentiousness of their claims. It is in great part through the two major motifs in

Throughout James Joyce’s “Dubliners” there are four major themes that are all very connected these are regret, realization, self hatred and Moral paralysis, witch is represented with the actual physical paralysis of Father Flynn in “The Sisters”. In this paper I intend to explore the different paths and contours of these themes in the four stories where I think they are most prevalent ,and which I most enjoyed “Araby”, “Eveline”, “The Boarding House”, and “A Little Cloud”.

Before examining the modernist elements in the above mentioned novels, I would like to look at some of the features of Modernism.

What further contributed to the rise of modernism was the First World War, which shell-shocked many. People lost their sense of certainty and it made them change their points of views. It made modernists question civilisation. This is seen in T.S Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” which questions