James Joyce Dublinerers Analysis

The Art of Baroque and James Joyce 's "Dubliners"

Subhadip Das . M.phil research scholar. Rabindra bharati University.kolkata

‘Baroque’ is a term employed by art historians to denote the trend in European art from 1600 and roughly covering the seventeenth century. The term has been used to extend to literary works as well, where there are common ideas and recurrent motifs that suggest a broadly unified mode of perception, thought, expression and imagination. Yet certain difficulties remain, art historians are not unanimous about its nature and extent. For literary critics there is the added difficulty of drawing significant relationship between literature and the visual arts.

One of the primary aspects of the Baroque is in its dynamism.

”Caravaggio and Rembrandt specialized in the use of this technique. A whole set of new spiritual and moral meanings can be extracted from this technique of handling of light and darkness : appearance and reality, vision and blindness for example: yellow light (from a hidden source) represents divine intervention in Bernini’s St.Teresa. Joyce has made extensive use of this technique in ‘Dubliners’. In the story ‘Grace’ we see Mr Cunningham speaks indirectly about chiaroscuro when he talks about the motto of Pope Leo XIII : “ Pope Leo XIII, said Mr. Cunningham, ‘was one of the lights of the age. His great idea, you know, was the union of the Latin and Greek Churches. That was the aim of his life. I often heard he was one of the most intellectual men in Europe, said Mr. Power. I mean, apart from his being Pope. So he was, said Mr. Cunningham, if not the most so. His motto, you know, as Pope, was Lux upon Lux -- Light upon Light. No, no, said Mr. Fogarty eagerly. I think you 're wrong there. It was Lux in Tenebris, I think -- Light in Darkness. O yes, said Mr. M 'Coy, Tenebrae.” What is interesting here is that the word ‘Tenebrae’ is derived from Italian ‘tenebroso’, which means murky. These are paintings which are said to have a

Landscapes by Hobbema and Ruysdael were balanced by Dutch interiors of Pieter de Hooch and Vermeer. In fact Joyce had purchased a reproduction of Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft ‘which hung in his Paris flat.

The Baroque artists delighted in the use of concealed allegory, symbolism, emblematism. Joyce’s use of the ‘chalice’ may be referred to here: In ‘Araby’: “These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.” “The same symbol is given a darker purport in the first story of the book, ‘The Sisters’, when it is recalled that the dying priest had disgraced himself by breaking a chalice.”

If we take a look at Caravaggio’s famous painting ‘Sacrifice of Isaac’ and compare it with Farrington beating up his little kid in ‘Counterparts’; the similarities are many: the fear evident in the voice of the boy as well as in the eyes of Isaac ,the grim brutal resolve in the eyes of Abraham as well as in the voice of Farrington. But what separates the painting from the story is that in the story the redeeming angel never appears though the unhappy boy cries out ‘Hail Mary’. We wait and the Angel does not show up. Thus both Joyce and Caravaggio attempt to move, manipulate and persuade the viewer/reader as well as to draw him to a personal involvement, attempting to create a meeting ground for life and art. The most conscious example of this would be perhaps