A Study On The Musicality Of Narratives In Dubliners

Dubliners is a masterpiece of modernist short stories by the Irish writer James Joyce.This collection of stories contains four parts: childhood,adolescence,adulthood and social life,recreating the paralyzed living conditions and paralyzed social environment of the middle-class citizens of Ireland in the beginning of the 20 th century.Based on Werner Wolf’s concept of musicalization,Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of polyphonic and Gérard Genette’s theory of intertextuality,this paper examines the musicality of the work Dubliners.Through analyzing musicality in both the narrative structures and the narrative contents,the thesis reveals,under the paralyzed city Dublin,people’s moral paralysis,disillusionment and hopelessness,their desire to escape and their predicament of life with nowhere to escape.This thesis first points out that the work Dubliners has two musical narrative structures namely symphony and polyphony.In the four-part symphonic narrative structures,which includes the sonata form,a theme and variations,the rondo and a coda,the themes of paralysis,escapement,and disillusionment are constantly repeated,developed,and varied.In the polyphonic narrative structure,themes of paralysis,escapement,and disillusionment are independent and form a polyphonic musical structure.Second,in the musical narrative contents that include musical allusions and musical performances the themes of paralysis,escapement and disillusionment are reflected.In the paralyzed mental state of the city Dublin,people have experienced disillusionment of love and painful memory of love,and they desire to escape and pursue love but still have doubts about love.The oppression of women and personal humiliation are also expressed.Finally,the thesis concludes that Joyce,by giving his work Dubliners a feature of musicality,profoundly critiques the spiritual paralysis of the city Dublin,but at the same time he still cherishes the hope for the future of his city.