Introduction
We will continue focusing on Modernist
writers. This time our attention will turn to D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce,
two important literary figures of the 20th Century.
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence is considered one of the most influential writers of the
20th century. He was born David Herbert Lawrence in 1885, in the small mining
town of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His father, Arthur John Lawrence,
was a coal miner, and his mother, Lydia Lawrence, worked in the lace-making
industry to supplement the family income. Lawrence's mother had come from a
middle-class family and had become well educated and a lover of literature. She
was the one to instill in Lawrence a love of books and the desire to rise above
his blue-collar origins. Lawrence’s working-class upbringing made a strong
impression on him, and made him write extensively about the experience of
growing up in a poor mining town.
Lawrence developed a number of theories about the flaws of modern
civilization which helped him justify his literary endeavors. He continually
sought means to overcome the alienation which was typical of industrialized
society through a fusion of man with woman, man with man, and man with nature.
Lawrence showed interest in relationships between men, although he strongly
disapproved of homosexuality. His theory of blood-brotherhood gave emphasis on
the regenerative powers of an authentic male friendship, and valued physical
but non-sexual intimacy between men highly, as can be observed in scenes of
wrestling in Women in Love (1916) and massage in Aaron’s
Rod (1922).
Lawrence read Nietzsche and Freud and became convinced that sexual
repression was the cause of the deterioration of English civilization.
Particularly he blamed Christianity for its repressive division of the self
into spirit and flesh and its privileging of the spirit. He found in Freud’s
Oedipal theory material for the development of his own views of the mother-son
relationship, which he explored in his autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913). He shared
the expressionist ideal of the work of art springing from the depths of its
creator’s unconscious life. His efforts to depict sexuality honestly made him a
leading practitioner of modern fiction. His fourth novel, The Rainbow (1915) became a target of the
National Purity League. The novel was attacked for its descriptions (which
would be considered rather restrained by today’s standards) of its heroine’s
sexual relations with lovers of both sexes. Court proceedings were taken
against the publisher, Methuen, not the author, and Methuen chose not to defend
the novel. Much of the first edition was destroyed, and Lawrence could not find
a British publisher for the sequel, Women
in Love.
Reviled as a crude and pornographic writer for much of the latter part
of his life, D.H. Lawrence is now widely considered as one of the great
modernist English-language writers. His linguistic precision, mastery of a wide
range of subject matters and genres, psychological complexity and exploration
of female sexuality distinguish him as one of the most refined and
revolutionary English writers of the early 20th century.
Lawrence himself considered his writings an attempt to challenge and
expose what he saw as the constrictive and oppressive cultural norms of modern
Western culture. He once said, "If there weren't so many lies in the world
... I wouldn't write at all."
D.H. Lawrence died in 1930, at the age of 44, in France, leaving a
legacy of novels, short stories and poetry behind.
D.H. Lawrence,
the poet
Although being best known for his novels, Lawrence also wrote almost 800
poems, most of them relatively short. His first poems were written in 1904 and
two of his poems, Dreams Old and Dreams
Nascent, were among his earliest published works. His early works clearly
place him in the school of Georgian poets, a group of poets named after the
reigning monarch. What typified the entire group, and Lawrence's poems of the
time, were well-worn poetic tropes and deliberately archaic language. Many of
these poems displayed the tendency to ascribe human emotions to animals and
even inanimate objects.
D.H. Lawrence,
the writer
Four of the most well-known novels written by D. H. Lawrence were: Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920) and Lady
Chatterley’s Lover (1928). Refer back to the material distributed in class for their brief summaries activity.
Sons and Lovers
Sons and
Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It has been
placed ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While
the novel initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with
allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece by many critics
and is often regarded as Lawrence's finest achievement.
DH Lawrence summarized the plot of his novel with by saying the
following:
It follows this idea: a
woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no
satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for her husband, so her
children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow
up she selects them as lovers — first the eldest, then the second. These sons
are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother — urged on
and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is
the strongest power in their lives, and holds them. It's rather like Goethe and
his mother and Frau von Stein and Christiana — As soon as the young men come
into contact with women, there's a split. William gives his sex to a fribble,
and his mother holds his soul. But the split kills him, because he doesn't know
where he is.
The next son gets a
woman who fights for his soul — fights his mother. The son loves his mother —
all the sons hate and are jealous of the father. The battle goes on between the
mother and the girl, with the son as object. The mother gradually proves
stronger, because of the ties of blood. The son decides to leave his soul in
his mother's hands, and, like his elder brother go for passion. He gets
passion. Then the split begins to tell again. But, almost unconsciously, the
mother realizes what is the matter, and begins to die. The son casts off his
mistress, attends to his mother dying. He is left in the end naked of
everything, with the drift towards death.
This is a novel which speaks directly to the modern reader, eliciting
both sympathy and empathy as Paul tries to become his own man. Lawrence’s
ability to tap into universal feelings and needs elevates this novel into a
sensitive study of love in all its forms, not just in the case of Paul Morel,
but on a deeper, grander scale. Though the novel is almost a hundred
years old, it is as fresh and rewarding to read today as a contemporary novel,
even when one considers the mores and prohibitions of that time period.
Lawrence, ahead of his time, has created one of the enduring classics of
English literature, one which supersedes time and place.
You may be interested in reading Sons
and Lovers in its original version, so you may want to check the page http://www.classicly.com/download-sons-and-lovers-pdf.
James Joyce
James Joyce was one of the most preeminent Irish authors of the
twentieth century. Known for his literary innovation such as a strictly focused
narrative and indirect style, Joyce brought the aforementioned writing methods
to an unparalleled height.
James Joyce was born in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland in 1882. Dublin
figured predominately in Joyce’s writings. Through this subject, Joyce felt as
though he could get to the heart of a universal urban experience. He was
educated at Belvedere College in Dublin. Although his family was poor, the
father was a civil servant and the mother was a pianist, Joyce managed to
graduate from University in 1902, after which he went to Paris. While there, he
held positions as a journalist, teacher and other jobs that did not pay him
very well.
Joyce is well known for his experimental use
of language, symbolic parallels and extensive use of monologue. However, during
his lifetime his works were often criticized by literary critics, rejected by
publishers and misunderstood by readers.
James Joyce wrote poetry and fiction. Chamber Music, a collection of 36 love
poems was published in 1907. Dubliners, a
collection of short stories portraying Dublin was published it in 1914. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
an autobiographical novel, published in 1916 and the play Exiles in 1918 figure among his works. At the beginning of World
War I, he moved to Zurich where he began working on the early chapters of Ulysses, his most famous novel,
published 1922.
James Joyce’s works include:
Chamber Music (poems, 1907)
Dubliners (short-story collection,
1914)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (novel, 1916)
Exiles (play, 1918)
Ulysses (novel, 1922)
Pomes Penyeach (poems, 1927)
Collected Poems (poems, 1936)
Finnegans Wake (novel, 1939)
The Cat and the Devil (a children's book, 1936)
Joyce’s works were considered
revolutionary in comparison to the canons of traditional novel. Like other
writers of that time, Joyce gave less importance to the action and more
importance to psychology of the characters. The three major characteristics of
the work of James Joyce are the stream of consciousness technique, the interior
monologue and epiphanies.
• The stream of consciousness is a
free association of thought, impressions, memories which suddenly breaks into
the mind of the protagonists stimulated by a perfume, a color, music or a banal
gesture.
• The interior monologue is the
expression of thoughts of the characters, usually expressed by the character
himself.
• The epiphany is a psychological
revelation suddenly manifested in an unexpected way, like a gesture, an object
or a banal situation.
Allegory in
James Joyce’s works
The influence of the medieval Italian poet Dante
Alighieri on Joyce’s works is a subject that has often been noted. The majority
of critical attention has been devoted to defining Joyce’s adaptation of Dante
and his use of allegory as they operate in his major works, Ulysses and Finnegans
Wake, and, to a lesser extent, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The
importance of Dante in Joyce’s first work, Dubliners, is often
overlooked. Regarding the book’s fifteen short stories as sketches of
immorality and despair, critics often relegate the influence of Dante to a mere
list of allusions meant to remind the reader of a convenient framework for
categorizing various types of sins, as Dante does in the Inferno, his
version of hell and the first volume of The Divine Comedy. Dubliners is
a stepping stone to a larger, more complex Dantean allegorical vision that does
not emerge until Joyce’s later work, and the hopeless moral depravity that
pervades its stories is set aside as a product of the pessimistic frustration
of a young writer who had not yet established his own artistic and aesthetic
vision.
Dubliners
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories first published in
1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th
century.
The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a
search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of
history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and
influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany. The initial stories in
the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue,
they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in
line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood,
adolescence and maturity.
Major Themes
in Dubliners
The Stages of
Life
As already pointed out, Dubliners
is organized into a framework chronicling a human life: beginning with younger
protagonists, and then moving forward into stories with increasingly aged men
and women. Although this is a broad generalization, the stories also tend to
increase in complexity. "Araby," "An Encounter," and
"Eveline," for example, are fairly simple and short tales. "The
Dead," the final tale of the collection, is nearly three times as long as
the average story in Dubliners. It is also the richest of the stories, weaving
together many of the previous themes of the book. Joyce's portrait of Dublin
life moves not only across a small range of classes (the poor and the middle
class) but also across the different periods of a human life.
Poverty and
Class Differences
Poverty is one of the most pervasive themes of the novel. Joyce usually
evokes it through detail: the plum cake Maria busy in "Clay," for
example, is a humble treat that costs her a good chunk of her salary.
Characters fight against their poverty. Lenehan in "Two Gallants"
sees no future for himself, and sits down to a miserable supper consisting only
of peas and ginger beer. Farrington of "Counterparts" stays in a
hateful job because he has no other options. We catch glimpses of slums, as in
"An Encounter," when the two young schoolboys see poor children
without fully comprehending what their ragged clothes imply about the small
children's home conditions and prospects in life. Dublin's poor economy is also
the reason why characters must fret about keeping even miserable jobs. Poverty
is never pretty in Dubliners. For every gentle, poor soul like Maria, there are
numerous revolting characters like Corley and Lenehan of "Two
Gallants." Joyce explores the negative affects poverty has on the
character.
Defeat,
Powerlessness, Stasis, Imprisonment, and Paralysis
These five themes are closely connected. The colonization of Ireland is
paralleled by the sense of defeat and powerlessness in the lives of
individuals. In many stories, characters are so trapped by their conditions
that struggling seems pointless. In "Counterparts," for example,
Farrington is allowed one moment of triumph when he publicly humiliates his
tyrannical boss. But for that one moment, Farrington is made to grovel in
private, and he knows afterward that his life at work will become even more
unpleasant.
Joyce conveys this powerlessness through stasis. In Dublin, not much
moves. At times the paralysis is literal: note Father Flynn in "The
Sisters." At other times, the stasis is a state of life, as with the
frustrated Little Chandler of "A Little Cloud." This feeling of
stasis is closely connected to a feeling that Dublin is a kind of prison.
Many characters feel trapped. The entrapment is often caused by a
combination of circumstances: poverty, social pressure, family situation.
Sometimes, the imprisonment comes from the guile of another character, as with
the hapless Mr. Doran in "The Boarding House."
The frustration caused by this stasis, impotence, and imprisonment has a
horrible effect on the human spirit. Often, the weak in Dubliners deal with
their frustration by bullying the still weaker. Mahony of "An
Encounter" picks on small children and animals, Little Chandler and
Farrington, in two back-to-back stories, take out their frustrations on their
children.
Longing for
Escape
A longing for escape is the natural complement to the above themes. Its
first expression comes from the boys of "An Encounter," whose dreams
of the American Wild West provide an escape from the tedium of Dublin.
Unfortunately, most of the characters are unable to escape. Eveline finds
herself too frightened to leave Ireland; Farrington finds even alcohol
unsatisfying; Little Chandler realizes he'll never find the focus to be a poet.
The greatest barrier to escape is sometime psychological, as it is with
Eveline. Dubliners has some
profoundly lonely characters in it, but the theme of isolation does not end
there. Isolation is not only a matter of living alone; it comes from the
recognition that a man or woman's subjectivity is only their own, inaccessible
to all others. Failed communication is common throughout the stories. In other
stories, conversations are striking for how little meaningful communication
takes place. The supreme example of this theme in Dubliners comes in the dead,
when Gabriel and Gretta leave the party. While Gabriel thinks about his life
with Gretta and how much he desires her, Gretta cannot stop thinking about the
young boy, her first love, who died for need of her. Husband and wife have been
in the same room, but they may as well have been on different planets.
Mortality
Mortality is another theme, a natural result of Joyce's stages-of-life
structure. But the stories at the end of the collection, where the characters
tend to be older, are not the only ones to deal with mortality. Dubliners begins with "The
Sisters," a story about a young child's first intimate experience with
death. Thus the collection begins and ends with the theme of mortality. The
preoccupation with mortality puts a bleak spin on the themes of stasis and
paralysis: although it often feels in Dublin like time isn't moving, Joyce
reminds us that the steady crawl toward death is one movement we can count on.
If you are interested in reading Dubliners
to the full, check you can download the PDF version at http://www.planetebook.com/Dubliners.asp.
I would suggest that you change your font color to black. I really wanted to read this article, but couldn't because of the color.
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