LITERARY FOCUS - JAMES JOYCE (SERIES -1)

 INTRODUCTION


LITERARY FOCUS brings to you writers or literary events in news from the world of literature. One such literary event has brought prolific Irish author James Joyce under the scanner. 




WHO IS JAMES JOYCE?

  • FULL NAME           - James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
  • BORN                       - 2 Feb 1882 ( Dublin, Ireland)
  • DEATH                     - 13 Jan 1941
  • SPOUSE                    - Nora Barnacle
  • CONTRIBUTION   - His works are innovative and often cited as landmarks in the Modernist movement.
  • BEST WORK            - Ulysses 

WHY IS HE IN THE NEWS?

Up until now, Joyce's published as well as unpublished works weren't available in the public domain in the European Union. The copyright restrictions expired on 1 January 2012. The copyright controls are with Stephen Joyce - Joyce's grandson. 

It is to be noted that these restrictions have been lifted 70 years after the death of the author. This enables publications, adaptations, references, and performances without seeking permission or payment to the Joyce Estate. 

Some of the major works during James Joyce's lifetime are Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake.


WHAT IS BLOOMSDAY?

Bloomsday is named after the protagonist Leopold Bloom from the novel Ulysses. The day celebrating the life and work of the Irish author is observed annually in Dublin. 

The date 16 June was chosen as it was this day his novel Ulysses(1922) opens in 1904. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE MANY RAMAYANAS FOR AN UNPREJUDICED MIND

Image
P aula Richman, William H Danforth professor of South Asian Religions at Oberlin, Ohio, specialises in the study of Ramayana and Tamil. In her lecture ' Crossing Boundaries- Narratives and Persons Who Travel' at Delhi-based South Asian University, she spoke on stories travelling across borders over the centuries.    Speaking of the journey of a story or text across borders, she cited how Ramayana has taken "different forms, where stories are not only translated but retold, with each poet retelling it in a local context." She said various cultures have emphasised different "morals" from it.  Richman's 1991 book, ' Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia ', had to face criticism from Hindu activists for including inappropriate interpretations of the holy text. An essay by historian AK Ramanujan titled, ' Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and three thoughts on translations ', which detailed several interpret
Read more

IN A FEW WORDS AND POINTS- THE MIXED BAG

Image
TOPICS Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow The Bluest Eye Beloved Thomas Love Peacock William Hazlitt Philosophers, Thinkers and Reformers( Romantic Age) 1) TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW Famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28 Macbeth delivers this soliloquy in response to Lady Macbeth's death   2) THE BLUEST EYE   Written by Toni Morrison in 1970 The novel is set in 1941 in the backdrop of the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio Centres around the life of a young African-American girl named Pecola who is constantly called ugly due to her dark skin colour leading to the wish for blue eyes. Narration- Claudia MacTeer and a third-person narrator Drunk Cholly, Pecola's father rapes her. Pecola's child dies prematurely leading to her insanity Due to controversial topics, there had been numerous attempts to ban the book   3) BELOVED   Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Setting- Ame
Read more

THE LITERARY CANON: AN OVERVIEW

Image
THE LITERARY CANON: AN OVERVIEW Defining canon? The word  canon comes from the Greek word Kanon, meaning a measuring rod or standard. Now, the literary works that have achieved the status of classics, i.e of lasting quality and timeless worth are clubbed under the literary canon.  Oh! What's classics?  Classics are an outstanding example of timeless worth and lasting quality. It was first used by the 2nd-century Roman writer Aulus Gellius. It is said that Aulus in the miscellany Noctes Atticae place writers as classics scriptor , non preletarius ( " A distinguished, not a commonplace writer"). Now, this kind of classification began with the Greeks! The ranking of their cultural works appeared with the word canon. A canon could be a body of work representing high culture: be it literature, music or philosophy. Now, in literature, if you ask, we have influential works from every continent. Continent, you say! Well, some classics precede the coinage of the word 'con
Read more