Notes 28^th March 2012

Oral examination

Gretta is not described from the physical point of view. She is described trough a reaction when she listens to a song. In describing the scene Joyce reports features following a scientific method. She comes from social class inferior to  Gabriel’s. Gabriel’s mother does not like her, she does not wear the galoshes given by her husband. She is touched by the song she had a love story ith an ill boy, her name is characterized by harsh sounds, she has children  but she does not speak of them and she does not talk about her husband as well. Those are the few elements we know about her.

She is an expedient to start  Gabriel's epiphany, giving him the possibility to look inwards. Thus this character is functional to highlight the protagonist's inner growth. Gretta is not a protagonist but a secondary and marginal character.

Gabriel is not autonomous from the emotional point of view, he depends on Gretta. He married a socially inferior woman because, like every man, he thinks he can dominate her, but he gradually loses his head for her.

Any of  Joyce’s novel or short story talks about two categories of men: the jinxed and the intellectual.

An epiphany is a moment of illumination. The term comes from a religious festivity that celebrates the wise men's visit to f Jesus.

Analysis of Tradition and the Individual Talent

The function of the title is to clarify to the reader the concept of tradition. A writer can be said to be traditional when he is  aware of his position in time. Time is seen under two perspectives: the temporal and the timeless “Timeless” is time including all times while “temporal” expresses  the writer's contemporaneity.

Every sentence that follows the thesis serves to support it.  

Creativity for Eliot comes from awareness. Indeed innovative writers knew all the previous literary works. Without Modernism there would be  no Post-modernism.

The consciousness of the two aspects of time are requisites to make a traditional writer.

The rhythm of English language depends on the alternation of stress while the rhythm of the Italian language depends on the succession of syllable.

For this reason an English poet adapted Petrarch's Italian sonnet to the English language. Transformations are at the core of literature.