The Use of Music in Joyce's Style, Characterization, Structure and Theme
Elisa Berlin
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Augsburg (Lehrstuhl für Englische Literaturwissenschaft), course: James Joyce - Dubliners, language: English, abstract: „The singing voice, like the speaking voice, masks and betrays the unconscious through combinations of pitch and word. Why sing if not to communicate supplementary information that words alone cannot convey?”
Music and Literature have always been influencing each other and quite often music plays an important role in literature. Sometimes it contributes an entertaining or even humoristic factor, occasionally it pushes the action and at times it serves as a mirror of the culture to emphasize emotions and environment of the characters.
Joyce’s characters in Dubliners sing and perform when they can no longer speak about their frustrations or passions. Therefore the musical allusions always imply a clash between reality and imagination. What is desired in the song will almost certainly not happen. “In its attributes of direct emotional expressiveness, its allusiveness, its contact with the collective past through folk song and physical rhythm, and in its tremendous emotional range from the banal to the sublime, music offers resources that in certain ways can challenge or surpass spoken language.”
In Dubliners Joyce uses music in three distinct ways. Firstly, in a realistic manner to define the real world in which his character live in. Secondly to emphasize the importance of romance and form the background and the texture of their lives and thirdly for the revelation of character because his characters reveal themselves through music.
