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James Joyce

2011-12-29T17:24:48Z

Langanke:

1882-1941. Novelist.

James Augustine Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and died at the age of 59 in 1941. He had three brothers and six sisters. Joyce came from a lower middle-class family which often had financial difficulties. In 1904 he [[Bloomsday|met Nora Barnacle]] who bore him a son and a daughter and who he married in 1931.

From 1888 to 1893 he visited Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boy's school and later on he went to Belvedere College, another Jesuit boy's day-school. In the following years Joyce studied several subjects at University College in Dublin and in 1902 he had a short enrollment at the Royal University Medical School. James Joyce was a born and bred Catholic, but his faith dwindled in the course of this life. In the year 1889 he became an altar boy and in 1895 he entered the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But after his death he was buried without the last rites of the Catholic Church.

Until 1915 he taught English in Trieste, then moved to Zurich with his wife and two children. In 1920 they settled in Paris, living in virtual poverty even after the successful publication of Ulysses in 1922. The intervention of literary friends such as Ezra Pound secured for Joyce some much-needed financial assistance from the British government.

'''Literary Interests:'''

James Joyce wrote and published several provocative papers and also reviewed plays by [[Ibsen]], a contemporary Norwegian dramatist. Joyce was in contact with the most important poets of that time: W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. He also formed a theatre group and won academic prizes for his papers in 1894 and 1897.

During the year 1914, Joyce and his family moved to Zurich, where they lived in great poverty while he worked on Ulysses.
His novel began to appear in serial form in the Little Review in 1918, but was suspended in 1920 following prosecution. The first unlimited edition followed in 1924 in Paris, but there was no American edition until ten years later, and no British edition until 1937.

The novel Ulysses traces the experiences of Mr. Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly and the poet Stephen Dedalus from A Portrait of the Artist during a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin. As its title suggests, however, the book is an epic, loosely analogous to Homer's Odyssey, which is echoed in several episodes. Enormously long and complex, using a variety of styles, notably the "stream-of-consciousness" method, Ulysses is considered one of the great literary achievements of the century, and has been described as the greatest novel ever written.

Joyce scrambled up the old formulas and his books Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake ignored traditional plot and sentence structure in favor of sprawling, witty, complex mixtures of wordplay and streams of consciousness.

'''Works:'''

'''''Chamber Music''''' (volume of poems) (1907), '''''Dubliners''''' (collection of short stories) ( 1914) ,''''' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''''' (novel; fictional autobiography) (1914/1915), '''''Exiles''''' (play) (1918) , '''''Ulysses''''' (novel) (1922) , '''''[[Finnegans Wake]]''''' (novel) (1939)

'''Sources:'''

Attridge, Derek . ''The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Birch, Dinah. ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature''.Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009.

Connor, Steven. ''James Joyce'', Plymouth: Northcote House. 1996.

Joyce, James. ''Dubliners''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008.

James Joyce

2011-10-28T12:57:57Z

Langanke:

1882-1941. Novelist.

'''His Life, Family and education:'''

James Augustine Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and died at the age of 59 in 1941. He had three brothers and six sisters. Joyce came from a lower middle-class family which often had financial difficulties. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle who bore him a son and a daughter and who he maried in 1931.
From 1888 to 1893 he visited Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boy's school and later on he went to Belvedere College, another Jesuit boy's day-school. In the following years Joyce studied several subjects at Royal University in Dublin and in 1902 he had a short enrolment at the Royal University Medical School.

'''His Faith:'''

James Joyce was a Catholic, but his faith dwindled in the course of this life. In the year 1889 he became an altar boy an in 1895 he entered the Solidarity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But after his death he was buried without the last rites of the Catholic Church.

'''His Literary Interests:'''

James Joyce wrote and published several provocative papers and also reviewed plays by Ibsen, a contemporary Norwegian dramatist. Joyce was in contact with the most important poets of that time: W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. He also formed a theatre group and won academic prizes for his papers in 1894 and 1897.

'''His Works:'''

'''''Chamber Music''''' (volume of poems) (1907), '''''Dubliners''''' (collection of short stories) ( 1914) ,''''' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''''' (novel; fictional autobiography) (1914/1915), '''''Exiles''''' (play) (1918) , '''''Ulysses''' (novel) (1922) , '''''Finnegans Wake''''' (novel) (1939)

'''Sources:'''

Attridge, Derek . ''The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Birch, Dinah. ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature''.Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009.

Connor, Steven. ''James Joyce'', Plymouth: Northcote House. 1996.

Joyce, James. ''Dubliners''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008.

Virginia Woolf

2011-10-20T14:50:35Z

Langanke:

Née Adeline Virginia Stephen. 1882-1941. Writer, journalist, smoker. Married to [[Leonard Woolf]].

'''Early life'''

She had an intellectual background. Her father was Leslie Stephen, who was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Her sister [[Vanessa Bell]] was to become a painter. In 1895 her mother died unexpectedly, and Virginia suffered her first mental breakdown. After the death of her father in 1904 Virginia Stephen had a second nervous breakdown and moved to Bloomsbury, where she became a member of the [[Bloomsbury Group]]. Besides her breakdowns Virginia had suffered sexual molestation at the hands of her two-half brothers George and Gerald Duckworth. Virginia and her family often spend their summer holidays at Talland House in St Ives, Cornwall. St Ives alsow as the setting for her famous nóvel "To the lighthouse".

'''Education:'''

Virginia was educated at home from the resources of her father's huge library.
Later she studied Greek, Latin, German and History at King`s College London Ladie´s Department from 1897-1901. There she got in contact with reformers of women´s higher education.

'''Works:'''

Novels:

''The Voyage Out'' (1915),'' Night and Day'' (1919), ''Jacob's Room'' (1922), ''Mrs Dalloway'' (1925), ''To the Lighthouse'' (1927), ''Orlando'' (1928), ''The Waves'' (1931), ''The Years'' (1937), ''Between the Acts'' (1941).

Countless essays and newspaper articles on literature and culture. Very influential are ''A Room of One's Own'' (1929), an extended essay on women and women's writing.

Virginia Woolf´s novels were considered experimental, but, in contrast to James Joyce's ''Ulysses'' (1922) more accessible. Although she did not invent the [[stream of consciousness]], she experimented with it and finetuned its form. Her emphasis was not on plot or characterization but on a character's consciousness (cf. Virginia Woolf "Modern Fiction" (1919) and revised as "Modern Novels" in 1925). In this essay Virginia Woolf points out that it is important for modern writers to free from conventions and instead to record impressions in an unordered way to be closer to reality. Virginia is not interested in large plot events, but in smaller things and also wants to look into the working of the mind (character focalization).

'''Sources'''

Bennett, Joan. Virginia Woolf. Her Art as a Novelist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.

Bloom, Harold. ''Virginia Woolf''. Chelsea: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.

Stape, John Henry. ''Virginia Woolf. Interviews and recollections''. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter13.html

http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/

Virginia Woolf

2011-10-18T18:03:22Z

Langanke: Created page with ''''Virginia Woolf''' born 1882 as Adeline Virginia Stephen in London and died 1941 by committing suicide. '''Her early life:''' She had an intellectual background. '''Educ…'

'''Virginia Woolf'''

born 1882 as Adeline Virginia Stephen in London and died 1941 by committing suicide.

'''Her early life:'''
She had an intellectual background.

'''Education:'''
She studied Greek, Latin, German and History at King`s College London Ladie´s Department from 1897- 1901. There she got in contact with reformers of women´s higer education.

'''Her Works:'''
Bloomsbury Group
Novels: The Voyage Out (1915), Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931)

Virginia Woolf´s novels were considered experimental. She is also claimed to be the inventor of stream of conscoiousness, but she only developed it.