Joyce's Style of 'scrupulous Meanness' in His Literary Work "Dubliners"

Joyce's Style of 'scrupulous Meanness' in His Literary Work

Author: Beate Wilhelm

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2007-11

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13: 3638782808

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Ulster (Faculty of Arts), course: Proseminar Irish Author Studies, 5 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: When in 1914 James Joyce wanted to have his literary work Dubliners published by the British publisher Grant Richards, it was not at all as easy as Joyce had imagined. Before Richards could accept the work changes had to be applied that were accompanied by an exchange of various letters between author and publisher. The reason for Richard's hesitation to publish the book in its first version was the very accuracy of its language. Literary conventions would have been shocked by Joyce's accurate and entirely realistic description of social situations and psychological states. In his letter to Grant Richards Joyce tries to justify his style, and it is thus that he speaks of 'scrupulous meanness' for the first time. The term 'meanness' connotes stinginess or the lack of generosity. Joyce uses it to describe the economy of language applying to his stories. However, the interpretation demands a more complicated understanding of the term. 'Scrupulousness' is a crucial element both in Joyce's use of language, and in the structure and form of the stories. 'Scrupulous meanness' refers to a most complex and heavily allusive style that determines the reading of Dubliners. From the minimum of words Joyce succeeds to extract the maximum effect so that the very economy of his style gives Dubliners such concentration and resonance that it "passes through realism into symbolism" (Dubliners,1991, p. xix). Joyce puts this style forward as a means to express his moral intent. This essay aims to examine James Joyce's method of 'scrupulous meanness' in two short stories chosen from the collection of Dubliners: 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead'. In addition, Joyce's attempt of conveying a temper of death and hopelessness shall find access into t


Critical Companion to James Joyce

Critical Companion to James Joyce

Author: A. Nicholas Fargnoli

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1438108486

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examines the life and writings of James Joyce, including a biographical sketch, detailed synopses of his works, social and historical influences, and more.


Dubliners

Dubliners

Author: James Joyce

Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Published: 2014-05-25T00:00:00Z

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dubliners is a collection of picturesque short stories that paint a portrait of life in middle-class Dublin in the early 20th century. Joyce, a Dublin native, was careful to use actual locations and settings in the city, as well as language and slang in use at the time, to make the stories directly relatable to those who lived there. The collection had a rocky publication history, with the stories being initially rejected over eighteen times before being provisionally accepted by a publisher—then later rejected again, multiple times. It took Joyce nine years to finally see his stories in print, but not before seeing a printer burn all but one copy of the proofs. Today Dubliners survives as a rich example of not just literary excellence, but of what everyday life was like for average Dubliners in their day. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.


The Wallcreeper

The Wallcreeper

Author: Nell Zink

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2015-07-23

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0008130868

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

‘Heady and rambunctious ... Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humour, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows – this book is a wild thing.’ New York Times Book Review


Dubliners

Dubliners

Author: James Joyce

Publisher: First Avenue Editions ™

Published: 2015-08-01

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1467797774

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of fifteen short stories by Irish author James Joyce examines how one's surroundings can shape and influence a person. Although initially considered too edgy for publication, Dubliners later became a classic as readers began to appreciate Joyce's realistic fiction. In each story, Joyce documents the daily lives and hardships of fictional Dublin citizens. Joyce's collection progresses from the struggles of childhood to the struggles of adulthood. This collection includes one of Joyce's most famous short stories, "The Dead," which depicts the ways memories of the past can intrude upon the present. Joyce provides a glimpse into twentieth-century Irish culture and history in this unabridged short story collection, first published in 1914.


Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation

Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation

Author: Vivian Heller

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780252064852

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Modernism has long been seen as either a symptom of decadence or a sign of emancipation. Vivian Heller argues that Joyce's writing cannot be categorized as either decadent or emancipatory because it is predicated on the dialectical intimacy of these two terms. Heller relies on Joyce's changing use of epiphany to trace the arc of his development, focusing on the negative epiphanies of Dubliners, the relativistic epiphanies of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the retrospective epiphanies of Ulysses.


Dubliners 100

Dubliners 100

Author: Thomas Morris

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780992817015

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Dubliners 100 invites new and established Irish writers to create 'cover versions' of their favourite stories from James Joyce's Dubliners.


A Study of Place in Short Fiction by James Joyce, William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson

A Study of Place in Short Fiction by James Joyce, William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson

Author: Abd Alkareem Atteh

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1527568334

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book sheds light on the modernist short story cycle and its pivotal role in representing and depicting place. With an ever-changing attitude towards place and what it means, modernist writers found in the short story cycle a suitable form to depict this sense of change. Drawing from a range of recent theories of the short story cycle and theories of place, this book highlights, in a comparative way, the role of the emergent short story genre and its seminal role in grasping and capturing a fragmented world through the various short and interconnected narratives and narrative strategies a short story cycle can accommodate. As such, this text contributes to the study of the modernist short story (cycle), American literature, Irish literature, comparative literature, and theories and studies of place.


Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity

Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity

Author: Thomas Jackson Rice

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780252065835

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thomas Rice compellingly argues that James Joyce's work resists postmodernist approaches of ambiguity: Joyce never abandoned his conviction that reality exists, regardless of the human ability to represent it. Placing Joyce in his cultural context, Rice first traces the influence of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries on Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He then demonstrates that, when later innovations in science transformed entire worldviews, Joyce recognized conventional literary modes of representation as offering only arbitrary constructions of this reality. Joyce responded in Ulysses by experimenting with perspective, embedding design, and affirming the existence of reality. Rice contends that Ulysses presages the multiple tensions of chaos theory; likewise, chaos theory can serve as a model for understanding Ulysses. In Finnegans Wake Joyce consummates his vision and anticipates the theories of complexity science through a dynamic approximation of reality.


James Joyce and Modern Literature

James Joyce and Modern Literature

Author: W. J. McCormack

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1317287282

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection, first published in 1982, brings together thirteen writers from a wide variety of critical traditions to take a fresh look at Joyce and his crucial position not only in English literature but in modern literature as a whole. Comparative views of his work include reflections on his relations to Shakespeare, Blake, MacDiarmid, and the Anglo-Irish revival. Essays, story and poems all combine to celebrate the major constituents of Joyce’s work – his imagination and comedy, his exuberant use of language, his relation to the history of his country and his age, and his passionate commitment to ‘a more veritably human tradition’. This title will be of interest to students of literature.