Elements Of Modernism In James Joyce

James Joyce and D.H Lawrence were the pioneers of their time and are also known as the modern novelists. “Modernism” signifies a set of aesthetic tendencies associated with writers like Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence and Pound who wrote around 1920’s in defiance of the decadent Victorian and Edwardian tradition replacing it what is now called “High Modernism”. James Joyce (1882-1941) was a daring innovator, and he started his career as a novelist with realistic pictures of life, but with a special emphasis on the exploration of the states of human consciousness. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Dorothy Richardson were the greatest among the psychological novelists of the twentieth century. They discarded the conventional concept of time and directed

This egocentricity derives from their introverted nature.From this egocentricity proceed various manifestations of pride. It is the egocentricity of Paul and Stephen which finds its natural expression not in love, but in lust. It is lust which makes Stephen visit prostitutes frequently, and it is this lust which does not allows Paul to love Miriam and later results in a sexual intercourse with Clara Dawes, wife of Baxter Dawes. In describing the agony of frustrated lust, Joyce makes its obscenity plain. Stephen clearly recognizes his state of mortal sin and he acknowledges the interconnection of his lust and pride. It is possible to see the wading girl episode as the complete deliverance of Stephen from the restraints imposed on his sexuality by the church. Joyce seems to think that certain aspects of egocentricity are essential in the development of an artist. For instance, it would perhaps not have been possible for Stephen to find his true identity or his real vocation as artist without the following expressions of his egocentricity: Firstly, he feels compelled to excel at Belvedere in essay writing; secondly, he shows his defiant non-conformism in his encounter with Heron; thirdly, he is so rebellious that he identifies himself with Lucifer; lastly, his pursuit of individuality is ruthless, and it is this pursuit which shatters the collective ties to family, nation and religion. In case of Paul Morel, the protagonist of ‘Sons and lovers’, one can see D.H Lawrence’s perpetual search for the archetypal human relationship and his preoccupation with the love ethic and the profound split caused by the imbalance or “power cast” of most relationship which are so nakedly revealed. Paul Morel’s imprisoning relationship with his mother cripples all his other relationship. What begins as a warm wholesome attachment between mother and child later becomes shaded with incestuous overtones and ends as