Joyce - essays

Joyce - essays Ulysses gives a striking picture of a single days life microscopically revealed of two middle class Irish men: Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, both residents in Dublin. Technically the work is marked in part by eccentricities in form such as the economy of the punctuation, for instance, a frankness of language and a realism that spares the reader neither the sordid, nor the obscene. As an artist, Joyce shows skepticism towards any single sent of values, whether personal or public, individual or social, no single standard can be accepted because his artistic philosophy is translated into a technique which requires multiple identifications: Joyce tries to give a vision of the existence which constantly tends to be complete by whose definition will never be the result of a comparison with a et standard of completeness, because completeness has to be defined from within, In this endeavour, Joyce avoids ethical judgements and uses a dramatization of meanings that implies both aloofness and detachment. Skepticism is the dominating feeling but to consider Joyces entire work to be skeptical and morbid ant to consider it on the verge of the amoral would be a mistake. His work does have ethical implications, as artistic completeness has to be accomplished only through acceptance and rejection, and there are contradictory aspects in the Portrait, with present negative versions of values, for it is built on a generalized rejection of authority, and Ulysses which presents a positive standard of wholesomeness. The Portrait is a work perfectly integrated, dealing with the development of a young personality. It puts forth a whole series of feelings, going from rebellion to reflection and final aloofness. The promise of the novel is that individuality can only be reached though the rejection of ones background, the main theme is the relationship father-son, and around it there are several manifestations of a political, national...