James Joyce Araby 主题情节人物及背景分析

James Joyce Araby 主题情节人物及背景的详细介绍

"Araby"

Backgrounds Introduction

Ireland's major religion, Roman Catholicism, dominated Irish culture, as it continues to do today although to a lesser extent. Many families sent their children to schools run by Jesuit priests (like the one the narrator in attends) and convent schools run by nuns (like the one Mangan's sister attends). Catholicism is often seen as a source of the frequent conflict in Irish culture between sensuality and asceticism, a conflict that figures prominently in Joyce's autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . In many ways, Catholicism, particularly as practiced at the turn of the century, was an extremely sensuous religion, emphasizing intense personal spiritual experience and surrounding itself with such rich trappings as beautiful churches, elegant paintings and statues, otherworldly music, and

sumptuous vestments and altar decorations. On the other hand, the Church's official attitude toward enjoyment of the senses and particularly toward sexuality was severe and restrictive. The ideal woman was the Virgin Mary, who miraculously combined virginal purity with

maternity. Motherhood was exalted, but any enjoyment of sexuality, even in marriage, was considered a sin, as were the practice of birth control and abortion. The inability to reconcile the spiritual and sensual aspects of human nature can be seen in the boy's feelings toward Mangan's sister in He imagines his feelings for her as a "chalice"--a sacred religious object--and so worshipful is his attitude that he hesitates even to speak to her. Yet his

memories of her focus almost exclusively on her body--her figure silhouetted by the light, the "soft rope of her hair," "the white curve of her neck," the border of her petticoat. Even the image of the chalice is ambivalent, since its cup-like shape and function suggests a sexual connotation. The boy never resolves this conflict between spirituality and sensuality. Instead, when confronted with the tawdriness of a shopgirl's flirtation at the bazaar, he abruptly dismisses all his feelings as mere "vanity."

Introduction of the story and the author

"Araby" is one of fifteen short stories that together make up James Joyce's collection,

Dubliners. Although Joyce wrote the stories between 1904 and 1906, they were not published until 1914.Dubliners paints a portrait of life in Dublin, Ireland, at the turn of the 20th century. Its stories are arranged in an order reflecting the development of a child into a grown man. The first three stories are told from the point of view of a young boy, the next three from the point of view of an adolescent, and so on. "Araby" is the last story of the first set, and is told from the perspective of a boy just on the verge of adolescence. The story takes its title from a real festival which came to Dublin in 1894 when Joyce was twelve years old.

Joyce is one of the most famous writers of the Modernist period of literature, which runs roughly from 1900 to the end of World War II. Modernist works often include characters who are spiritually lost and themes that reflect a cynicism toward institutions the writer had been taught to respect, such as government and religion. Much of the literature of this period is

James Joyce Araby 主题情节人物及背景的详细介绍

experimental; Joyce's writing reflects this in the use of dashes instead of quotation marks to indicate that a character is speaking.

Joyce had a very difficult time getting Dubliners published. It took him over ten years to find a publisher who was willing to risk publishing the stories because of their unconventional style and themes. Once he found a publisher, he fought very hard with the editors to keep the stories the way he had written them. Years later, these stories are heralded not only for their portrayal of life in Dublin at the turn of the century, but also as the beginning of the career of one of the most brilliant English-language writers of the twentieth century.

Plot

"Araby" opens on North Richmond street in Dublin, where "an uninhabited house of two

storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground." The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, lives with his aunt and uncle. He describes his block, then discusses the former tenant who lived in his house: a priest who recently died in the back room. This priest has a library that attracts the young narrator, and he is particularly interested in three titles: a Sir Walter Scott romance, a religious tract, and a police agent's memoirs.

The narrator talks about being a part of the group of boys who play in the street. He then

introduces Mangan's sister, a girl who captivates his imagination even though he rarely, if ever, speaks with her. He does stare at her from his window and follow her on the street, however, often thinking of her "even in places the most hostile to romance." While in the marketplace on Saturday nights, for example, he uses her image to guide him through the thronging crowd who yell their sales pitches and sing patriotic Irish ballads. He becomes misty-eyed just at the thought of her and retreats to the priest's dark room in order to deprive himself of other senses and think only of her.

Finally, Mangan's sister speaks to him. She asks if he will be attending a church-sponsored fair that is coming soon to Dublin--a bazaar called "Araby." He is tongue-tied and cannot answer, but when she tells him that she cannot go because of a retreat that week in her convent, he promises to go and bring her a gift from the bazaar. From then on he can only think of the time when he will be at the fair; he is haunted by "the syllables of the word Araby." On …… 此处隐藏：16901字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……