Portraits of the Artist as a Young Romanticist: Romanticism and the Romantics in Joyce's Early Novels

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DIPARTIMENTO DI

FILOLOGIA, LETTERATURA E LINGUISTICA

CORSO DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE IN

LETTERATURE E FILOLOGIE

EURO-AMERICANE

TESI DI LAUREA MAGISTRALE

Portraits of the Artist as a Young Romanticist: Romanticism

and the Romantics in Joyce's Early Novels

CANDIDATO

RELATORE

Jacopo Cout

Prof.ssa Roberta Ferrari

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Abbreviations

D James Joyce, Dubliners, ed. by Jeri Johnson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008 [1914].

P James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. by Jeri Johnson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008 [1916]. U James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. by Jeri Johnson, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 2008 [1922].

SH James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. by Theodore Spencer, London, Granada, 1977 [1944].

PSW James Joyce, Poems and Shorter Writings, ed. by Richard Ellmann, London, Faber & Faber, 2001.

CW James Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

LI James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce I, ed. by Stuart Gilbert, vol. 1, London, Faber & Faber, 1957.

LII James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce II, ed. by Richard Ellmann, vol. 2, London, Faber & Faber, 1966.

LIII James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce III, ed. by Richard Ellmann, vol. 3, London, Faber & Faber, 1966.

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Foreword

The problematic relationship between Romanticism and Modernism has fuelled for decades the critical discussion about these two founding moments of modern literature. As it is easy to understand, the central issue concerns not only the rejection of Romanticism by the new generation of writers, but also the influence that Romantic authors and the paradigm they established had on the 20th_century.

While occupied in dismantling the legacy of their predecessors, the Modernists’ attention was always focussed on the former tradition. James Joyce, in particular, an author T.S. Eliot considered as the one who definitively ‘killed’ the 19th century, established since his early years a deep and complex relation with Romanticism.

Apart from being highlighted in his juvenile critical writings, the ambiguous bond Joyce built with his Romantic precursors deeply affects the composition of the two versions of his Bildungsroman, the uncompleted draft Stephen Hero and the final novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Romanticism and its major authors become one of the major themes in the fictionalised account of Joyce’s formation, portraying the youth and genius of his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus. An analysis of the various references to the major Romantic writers and the wider cultural paradigm associated to them is thus fundamental in order to understand the progress of the forming modern artist, who must necessarily confront the Romantic tradition in order to find his own path.

Besides, comparing the two phases of Joyce’s Künstlerroman allows to consider how Joyce’s skilfulness matured, as far as the exploitation of cultural references in his fiction is concerned. In the evolution from the argumentativeness of Stephen Hero to the more ironically detached definitive novel, Romanticism is no longer represented as a mere literary concern, but as a general attitude that deeply influences one’s perspective on the world. Joyce’s representation of Stephen Dedalus’ development clearly improves, as the Irish writer’s scrupulous depiction of human reality gradually assimilates his critical insight into Romanticism, so that a cultural and literary problem can hardly be separated from more concrete and lifelike issues. Art and life merge together, and it is in their continual combination that the complete portrayal of the young modern artist comes to be realized.

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Introduction

In a brief article dated 1983, “Joyce and the Romantics: Suggestions for Further Research”1_{, Hermione De Almeida exposes many critics’ misleading tendency to}

ignore or dismiss the role of Romanticism in Joyce’s writings as a mere parodic element. Far from simply being a “youthful aberration in the adolescent Joyce which he overcame and then parodied as a youthful aberration in the young Dedalus”2_{, De Almeida points out that the influence of such great Romantics as}

Shelley, Byron and Blake encompasses the whole range and development of Joyce’s literary production. As she goes on suggesting, even the more philosophical insight of German Romanticism and the diverse traditions of continental Romantic movements can be suitably exploited in order to better understand better the Irish author’s work and its sources3_{. By these means, she asserts the importance that the}

cultural paradigm usually associated with the Romantic authors and their age should acquire in the body of Joycean criticism. Briefly, in less than five pages, promptings for more than a good dozen of other comparative studies are summarised, and many others are at the very least hinted at.

Nowadays, some 35 years after De Almeida’s note, it is possible to say that the gap she perceived has been progressively and bounteously bridged. A wide bibliography can be easily assembled on the subject. Timothy Webb’s essay “'Planetary Music': James Joyce and the Romantic Example”4_{, appeared shortly}

before the De Almeida’s article, represents already a milestone achievement. In the first place, it produces a very precise outline of the incidence of British Romantic authors in Joyce’s works, surveying both Joyce’s published and unpublished writings, letters and third party’s sources. Moreover, Webb’s attempt at ordering and interpreting the multifarious knot of biographical, fictional and intertextual references is, even in its conciseness, highly admirable. Among many other studies,

1_{Hermione de Almeida, ‘Joyce and the Romantics: Suggestions for Further Research’, James Joyce}

Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3, 1983, pp. 351–355.

2_{Ivi, p. 351.} 3_{Ivi, pp. 352-353.}

4_{Timothy Webb, ‘“Planetary Music”: James Joyce and the Romantic Example’, in James Joyce and}

Modern Literature, edited by W.J. McCormack and Alistair Stead, London, Routledge, 2015,

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then, another important step was surely marked by the appearance of the volume “Romantic Joyce”, eighth issue of Joyce Studies in Italy5_{. Incorporating both}

one-to-one comparative analyses of Joyce and another author, highlighting influences and intertextual occurrences in the Joycean corpus6, and more general studies on broader Romanticism-related subjects7_{, the volume edited by Franca Ruggieri}

exemplifies the two main tendencies of most critical essays about Joyce’s relationship with Romanticism. Many of these articles, indeed, are aimed at illustrating the Irish author’s relationship with one of his Romantic precursors, while others are mainly focussed on the correlation between his work and broader ideas or theorisations related to the Romantic movement and its legacy. Another general typology of writings, besides, may be located in between the two, as some studies reduce their scope in the attempt to define and compare a particular feature as it is found in a Romantic author and in Joyce8.

However, even though they usually provide very insightful notions that help to bring new light on many aspects of Joyce’s fiction, some of these studies are blurred by some methodological hindrances that overshadow their overall value. As a matter of fact, more general articles about Romantic influences on Joyce very often encounter a problem while attempting to determine the range and directness of such influences. In reviewing Laman’s book James Joyce and German Theory:

“The Romantic School and All That”9_{, for example, Gerd Bayer makes a statement}

that fitly epitomizes this tendency:

[o]ne of the main points of criticism of Laman's book concerns the problem of locating Joyce's debt to German theory within his texts. While Laman succeeds in showing parallels between Joyce and his German precursors, she has trouble showing that such parallels are more than just resemblances. Laman admits that in many cases Joyce knew the theories of German

5_{Franca Ruggieri (ed. by), Romantic Joyce, “Joyce Studies in Italy” 8, Roma, Bulzoni, 2004.} 6_{As, for example, Fritz Senn, ‘Byron Rumblings’, in Romantic Joyce, “Joyce Studies in Italy” 8,}

edited by Franca Ruggieri, Roma, Bulzoni, 2004, pp. 25–34; or Richard Brown, ‘Fragmentary Traces of Wordsworth in the Joycean Text’, in Romantic Joyce, “Joyce Studies in Italy” 8, edited by Franca Ruggieri, Roma, Bulzoni, 2004, pp. 57–70.

7_{As in Ronald Bush, ‘Joyce and Romantic Irony’, in Romantic Joyce, “Joyce Studies in Italy” 8,}

edited by Franca Ruggieri, Roma, Bulzoni, 2004, pp. 161–172.

8_{This is the case of articles such as Bjørn Tysdahl, ‘Wordsworth and Joyce: Unpredictability, or,}

Surprised by the Beauty of the City’, in Romantic Joyce, “Joyce Studies in Italy” 8, edited by Franca Ruggieri, Roma, Bulzoni, 2004, pp. 71–84.

9_{Gerd Bayer, ‘James Joyce and German Theory: “The Romantic School and All That” by Barbara}

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Romanticism only indirectly, as in the case of Schiller and Schlegel, whose writings he absorbed "by simple acquaintance with Goethe's works" […]10_.

The eclectic nature of Joyce’s philosophical, literary and human interests and the natural propension to intertextuality of his writings render every attempt to disentangle his possible sources and inspirations highly problematic and potentially misleading. This is even truer if such attempts are related to a wide category as that of Romanticism.

Whereas usually more focussed on the actual texts, on the contrary, comparative studies between Joyce and prior writers have still to face another problem. Ranging over the whole extent of Joyce’s literary evolution, author-based articles are often threatened by the peculiar way in which Joyce conceives and deals with past tradition. Usually developing from the early writings and essays of the young Joyce, these comparative studies grow through the increasing complexities of Joyce’s fiction, succeeding in different degrees in demonstrating the necessary evolution that the reception of a certain author had to withstand in an intense forty-year-long literary career. Moreover, most of these relatively short essays culminate in trying to handle the overwhelmingly intricate system of references in Finnegans

Wake, that very often becomes a blossoming graveyard for many Joyceans’

interpretations. To quote just an example, it is possible to refer to the remark that any occurrence of the word ‘black’ in Joyce’s last masterpiece could be etymologically related to William Blake, and the string ‘sol’ to the Blakean crafter Los11. Obviously, simply to cover the whole extent of implications such a hypothesis engenders, much more than a single brief study on Blake’s role and influence on the Irish author’s overall work would be needed.

For these reasons, a selective and cautious behaviour seems to be required, in order to deal with the problem of Joyce’s influences and/or allusions. First of all, premises akin to Leonard’s in his work on Blake and Joyce should be highly recommended to introduce any comparative work of this kind:

10_{Ivi, p. 389.}

11_{Timothy Webb, op. cit., p. 43. In fact, Webb mentions Robert Gleckner’s suggestion observing}

that “[his own] credulity is stretched, at most of this”, ibid. See then Robert F. Gleckner, ‘Joyce’s Blake: Path of Influence’, William Blake and the Moderns, edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Annatte S. Levitt, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1982, pp. 135–163.

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[i]n my discussion, from time to time, I argue that Blake directly influenced Joyce's work. More often, I argue that the ideas of Blake are analogous to Joyce's thematic concerns and that, while direct influence cannot be proven, comparison does illuminate Joyce's text12_.

Moreover, even the tendency to superimpose a theory or analysis inferred from another author, philosophy, or movement, and subsequently generally classified as an influence over Joyce, should be avoided. More often than not, such a procedure results in the misleading attempt to rearrange and overinterpret references and suggestions in order to impose on the Joycean text a rigid and univocal configuration that is quite alien to it. The closer an analysis clings to the text and draws its own material from it, the steadier its results are perceived. More than a study on influences, thus, an examination of the way in which Joyce refers and more or less systematically disposes of Romantic authors, works and conceptions may lead to interesting and less arbitrary outcomes.

Besides, further unevenness can be ascertained by a brief review of the massive bibliography on the subject of ‘Romantic’ Joyce. As it will be widely discussed later, probably the most romantic-influenced Joycean text, the unaccomplished novel Stephen Hero, is often overlooked by critics dealing with Joyce’s Romantic influences. While quotations and mentions of Romantic authors are usually carefully exposed and analysed in the other fictional works, the many direct citations and, even more importantly, the use of the terms ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Romantic’ as important theme words in this draft novel are often neglected13_.

Despite its fragmentary and unfinished form, though, this text is often discussed and exploited in order to study and interpret its published successor, A Portrait of

the Artist as a Young Man. As a matter of fact, this important position in the corpus

of Joyce’s writings, together with its recognised literary dignity, is reason enough to justify an attempt to fill the gap, trying to give an exhaustive account of the

12_{Garry Leonard, William Blake’s ‘Vegetable Existence’ and James Joyce’s ‘Moral Paralysis’: The}

Relationship between Blake’s Romantic Philosophy and Joyce’s Thematic Concerns in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, University of Florida, ProQuest Dissertations

Publishing, 1985, p. viii.

13_{In Webb’s study, for example, while a Shelleyan quotation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young}

Man is cited and analysed within its context (Timothy Webb, op. cit,, p. 34), a similar occurrence of

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system of textual ‘Romantic’ references within the surviving chapters of Stephen

Hero.

Therefore, considering this brief review of criticism about ‘Joyce’s Romanticism’, it is possible to define the scope of the present study. In the first place, the analysis will be aimed at a particular period of Joyce’s life and career, roughly coinciding with the first decade of the 20th century. Aimed at avoiding any loss of focus due to the developing nature of Joyce’s reception of Romanticism throughout his production, the emphasis on the early period of Joyce’s literary career is also particularly fit for an analysis of his own conception of Romanticism. As already said, the transition between Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as

a Young Man has always been considered and extensively studied as a turning point

in Joyce's production, and the two texts’ dichotomy stands as a momentous document of this passage. Moreover, during these years, Joyce’s activity as an essayist and journalist, both in Dublin and in Trieste, flourished: almost the whole of his critical writings can be dated to these years14. Even more importantly, most of Joyce’s essays and articles very often deal, directly or indirectly, with the Romantic movement and its authors, as it will be more widely explained later. Consequently, much can be said about the role played by Joyce’s conception of Romanticism in this period, through the comparison between the critical views expressed by non-fictional writings, as well as other sources15, and the defining moment of literary evolution in-between Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist

as a Young Man.

Such a narrowed perspective is also meant to enhance this analysis in two other aspects. To begin with, it will elicit the possibility of thoroughly discussing the thematic role of the concept of Romanticism in Stephen Hero. In this way, it will be possible to study some aspects of this fragmentary text that are often overlooked by critics, in order to give a more precise evaluation of this work. This

14_{His collection of critical writings (CW), as a matter of fact, contains only two brief texts that go}

beyond the year 1912.

15_{Besides the corpus of Joyce’s correspondence and the other major fictional masterpiece, the}

collection Dubliners, another established source of information amongst critics are Stanislaus Joyce’s memories of his brother (Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early

Years, edited by Richard Ellmann, Cambridge (Mass.), Da Capo Press, 2003), especially insofar as

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insight into this first incomplete novel, moreover, is also fundamental in the attempt to better understand A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and its own relationship with Romanticism. On the other hand, then, as the analysis will be focussed only on these two tightly interconnected works and constantly supported by the reference to the critical writings written in the same period, it will profit from a faithful adherence to the texts, thus avoiding the risk of overinterpretation.

For this reason, in this essay, no preliminary attempt to give a definition of Romanticism will be provided. The complexity of the theme and the risk of anachronistically overlapping definition too far from to Joyce’s own view should already deter from this endeavour. On the contrary, to introduce the first chapter of this study, it may be useful to refer to the acknowledged critical perspective of one of Joyce’s contemporaries, T.S. Eliot. By illustrating Eliot’s refusal of Romanticism and its causes, it will be possible to catch some glimpses of the complex debate that, at the beginning of the 20th century, was revolving around this subject, as well as setting an interesting touchstone for Joyce’s own point of view.

Furthermore, a Joycean definition of Romanticism, valid at least in the early years this study is going to analyse, is plainly stated and well worth analysing. After briefly discussing Eliot’s ‘Romantic question’, thus, the first chapter of the present work will mainly deal with Joyce’s critical conception of Romanticism. In this perspective, particular consideration will be devoted to the divergence between Joyce’s position in front of what he universally defines as the “Romantic temper” (CW 72; SH 73) and his consideration of the different and distinct authors. Another element to be taken into account is the mediated nature of ‘Joycean Romanticism’, as Joyce’s relationship with that concept and literary movement was quite consciously shaped by one century of other critical, artistic and even popular responses and metabolizations. In the same way, the established canon of British Romanticism cannot be conventionally and impartially treated: the preferences and personal attitudes of the Irish eclectic writer toward his Romantic precursors must be followed through their evolution in the first years of his career. Considering the various occurrences of the Romantics and of Romanticism in Joyce’s early writings, finally, it may be useful to propose a brief analysis of their thematic relevance

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within the other major fictional work that was being written in the same years of the two early novels, the collection of short stories Dubliners.

After introducing and discussing Joyce’s own idea of Romanticism and his early receptions of the various personalities related with it, it will be possible to consider how his initial perspective is transposed and developed in Joyce’s first attempt to the novel, Stephen Hero. Trying to organise the great deal of ‘Romantic’ references will be the aim of the second chapter of this work. As mentioned before, a systematic imposition of a general pattern of critical theorisations, even if directly derived from Joyce’s essays, would force the fictional text against its nature. As Joyce’s attempt at the genre of the Künstlerroman is characterised since the beginning by a certain degree of ironic distancing, even his position as critic cannot be directly transposed to its fictional world. Nonetheless, though, it can be argued that the thematic use of the concept of Romanticism, together with the many mentions and intertextual references to Romantic authors, can be traced back to a general pattern even in the fragmentary and incomplete text that survives nowadays. This will not only help to better understand the developing relation among Joyce, the highly autobiographical character of Stephen Daedalus and the Romantic tradition, but it will also cast new light on some aspects and narrative devices of

Stephen Hero itself.

In the third chapter, then, the analysis will focus on the role of the Romantics and Romanticism in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The bibliography on this topic is quite wide, though very often exceeding the actual text and its implications. An evaluation has thus to be carried forth, trying to locate and define the extent to which the author was influenced by the Romantics and, more importantly, actively exploiting them in the artistic process. In this sense, a comparison with this novel’s antecedent, Stephen Hero, is enlightening. Indeed, it will be possible to observe that the theme of Romanticism is seldom referred to as an exclusively literary issue, but it is more effectively integrated in the realistic psychological representation of Stephen’s youth and genius. Connected with this aspect, then, of outmost importance is the role of the ironic distancing from the protagonist. Many critics directly relate this aspect with the ‘Romantic’ nature of Stephen’s personal and artistic development, the problem of Joyce’s own

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consideration of Romanticism is fundamental in order to delve into his ironic rendering of the Bildungsroman. Briefly, thus, it will be possible to demonstrate how Joyce’s treatment of Romanticism and the Romantics in A Portrait of the Artist

as a Young Man, especially if compared to the former novel, can provide a

fundamental insight to define the ambiguous quality of Joyce’s narrative, constantly undecided between the celebration of Stephen’s deeds and their ironic dismissal.

Finally, some space will be devoted to proposing a possible extension of this study, that would very naturally evolve in an analysis of the Joycean conception and thematization of Romanticism in Ulysses. Firstly conceived during the same years in which Joyce was writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and written shortly after, Joyce’s first great epic represents a further step in its author’s reception and reshaping of Romanticism. Examining the complex system of

Ulysses’s ‘Romantic’ references, especially in the first and early composed

episodes of the novel, would further enhance the results of this study. Moreover,

Ulysses marks a further step in the evolution of the main character of the narratives

this work is going to analyse: considering the importance given to Stephen Dedalus’s developing figure in Joyce’s production, an evaluation of the farthest outcome of his relationship with Romanticism and the Romantics would complete the examination of his previous fictional portrayals.

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1. James Joyce, Romanticism and the Romantics

1.1 Modernism and Romanticism: T.S. Eliot’s Case

Very often, T.S. Eliot’s critical reception of Romanticism is taken as exemplary of the attitude of a whole generation towards its Romantic predecessors. Hence, in order to introduce Joyce’s relationship with the one-hundred-year-old heritage of the Romantic tradition, a brief review over Eliot’s position seems to be necessary. It is widely acknowledged that the Anglo-American poet bore a generalised dislike of the ideas and conceptions of Romanticism, and that this negative standpoint shaped his reception of the major authors of that period, his reaction ranging from suspicious mistrust to scornful and almost violent rejection. Though differing from Joyce’s in terms of final evaluation, Eliot’s way of dealing with the general category of Romanticism and its individual personalities often parallels that of the Irish author. Furthermore, in the perspective of this study, it is important to examine the causes and sources of this response, as they are deeply rooted in the critical and literary background of Eliot’s, and Joyce’s, time.

To begin with, it may be useful to outline some distinctions about the way in which Romanticism itself was perceived. Indeed, Eliot’s criticism has to be handled bearing in mind the fundamental distinction made by many of his contemporaries between the broader term ‘Romanticism’ and the authors who actually wrote and lived during the decades usually defined as the Romantic Age. As a matter of fact, the categorisation of Romanticism as a general and universal attitude was one of the key points in the critical discussion Eliot joined. In the first decade of the twentieth century, critics such as Irving Babbitt or Thomas E. Hulme were developing many of their theories by revitalising the traditional, transhistorical opposition between Classicism and Romanticism. On the other hand, Eliot, albeit influenced by these ideas, founded his career as an essayist and literary critic on a deep and precise analysis of particular authors and works, among whom great importance was given to such Romantic poets as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.

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Even though Eliot’s main studies about the Romantics mostly appeared in the 20sand 30s, his ideas are deeply rooted in the years of his formation. Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), Eliot’s professor at Harvard1, was certainly a major influence. Drawing his theories from French anti-romantic criticism,

[i]n his books, The New Laokoon (1910) and, particularly, Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), Babbitt launched an all-out offensive against romanticism accusing it of confused thinking, sham spirituality and, most damagingly, of being the sign of the juvenile and immature mind2_.

His definition of Romanticism is not limited to a single period or a group of authors, but encompasses a larger, more universal definition. Romantic is whatever may be “wonderful rather than probable”, whatever “violates the normal sequence of cause and effect in favor of adventure” and “is strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique, etc.”3_{. In a binary opposition to this conception, Babbitt considers}

Classicism as characterised by order, reason and self-limitation4_{, qualities which he}

clearly favours and approves. Understandably, thus, Babbitt’s dismissal is also aimed at the major writers of the Romantic Age. The harshest treatment, as frequently in this period, is reserved for Percy Bysshe Shelley: “the person who is as much taken by Shelley at forty as he was at twenty has, one may surmise, failed to grow up”5_{. In brief, Babbitt’s theorisation about the pre-eminence of the strictly}

ordered Classic mindset had a major role in developing the anti-romantic disposition of the first half of the 20th century6.

Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917), scholar and harbinger of the Imagist movement, was another critic that dealt in similar terms with the traditional Classical-Romantic dichotomy and had a strong influence over T.S. Eliot7. Again, his analysis is based on the redefinition of the old antithesis between Romanticism and Classicism, represented through the images of the well and the bucket. The

1_{Peter James Lowe, Christian Romanticism: T. S. Eliot’s Response to Percy Bysshe Shelley, Durham}

University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2002, p. 23.

2_{Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, ‘The Anti-Romantic Reaction in Modern(Ist) Literary Criticism’, Acta}

Neophilologica, vol. 47, no. 1–2, 2014, p. 57.

3_{Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1919, p. 4.} 4_{Peter James Lowe, op. cit., p. 18; Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, op. cit., p. 57.}

5_{Irving Babbitt, op. cit., p. 391.} 6_{Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, op. cit., p. 56.}

7_{J. R. Daniells, ‘T. S. Eliot and His Relation to T. E. Hulme’, University of Toronto Quarterly,}

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unbounded and infinite longing of Romanticism is represented by the well, whereas the Classical, the bucket, “never forgets th[e] finiteness, this limit of man”8. The idea of unrestrained human perfectibility avouched by Romantic writers, besides, only results in an attempt “to crystallise in verse round metaphors of flight”, of flight and fall “to the infinite nothing”9_{. Both in terms of artistic technique and}

universal attitude, Hulme’s sympathies are on the side of Classicism: as he advocates, “after a hundred years of Romanticism, we are in for a Classical revival”10_{. Far from being a mere artistic prediction, though, this augury bore many}

other implications. As it is often pointed out11, in fact, Hulme’s stances were not only rooted and confined within the field of literature, but they clearly had strong reactionary religious and political overtones.

Following this general trend, T.S. Eliot’s position on the Classic-Romantic dichotomy can be easily summarised. In one of his lectures in 1916, “The Reaction against Romanticism”, he follows quite straightforwardly Hulme’s track by stating that

[t]he beginning of the twentieth century has witnessed a return to the ideals of classicism. These may roughly be characterised as form and restraint in art, discipline and authority in religion, centralization in government12_.

Opposed to that, “Romanticism stands for excess in any direction”13_{: vagueness of}

idea and irrationality, incoherence and lack of orderliness are the main faults Eliot finds in this movement. Moreover, as these Romantic ideas were often associated with revolutionary or anti-religious positions, it is also easy to understand how the causes of T.S. Eliot’s rejection are not confined to his aesthetic theories, but encompass the whole range of his system of beliefs. Indeed, the ‘classicist-in-literature’ Eliot was deeply influenced by the ‘royalist-in-politics’ and

8_{T. E. Hulme, Speculations, London, Routledge, 1936, p. 120.} 9_Ibid.

10_{Ivi, p. 113.}

11_{See Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, op. cit., pp. 57-58.}

12_{T.S. Eliot, cited in Louis Menand, ‘T.S. Eliot’, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,}

Vol. 7: Modernism and the New Criticism, edited by A. Walton Litz et al., Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2006, p. 48.

13_{T.S. Eliot, cited in Jean-Michel Rabaté, ‘Tradition and T. S. Eliot’, in The Cambridge Companion}

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in-religion’ one14, demonstrating again how the Classic-Romantic antithesis was mainly perceived as a general and universal distinction between contrasting worldviews.

Nevertheless, his general distaste for Romanticism could not but deeply influence his reading of the Romantic poets as well. His first major monographic essay on a Romantic author, in 1920, was dedicated to William Blake15. Blake’s awkward position within the canon of Romanticism16_{, together with the unique}

character of his visionary poetry, seem to soften the anti-romantic tendency of the Modernist critic. As a matter of fact, T.S. Eliot praises Blake’s “honesty”17 and “innocence”18_{in seeing and depicting the naked man from a naked perspective}19_.

More importantly, his being a visual, ‘manual’ artist allows him to improve his craftmanship as a poet20, almost aligning him to the trend of restrained Classical art pursued by Eliot. However, in the second part of the essay, Blake’s limitations are clearly pointed out. His idiosyncrasies, mainly due to his personal system of beliefs and his visionary talent, “[make] him eccentric, and [make] him inclined to formlessness”21_{. The common accuse of egotistical unboundedness held against the}

character of Romanticism resurfaces here, marking Blake’s ineffectiveness in artistically shaping his philosophical system. Moreover, he “is too visionary, too remote from the world, […] too occupied with ideas”22_{to attain the degree of}

depersonalisation required to be truly Classical: Blake’s genius, to conclude, remains Romantic, since it is not tempered and ordered within the framework of tradition and Classic self-control23.

14_{Louis Menand points out the ‘negative’ nature of Eliot’s conception of Classicism, mainly defined}

as a reaction to any attitude in both poetry and politics which appears too progressive. See Louis Menand, op. cit., p. 49.

15_{T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, London, Methuen, 1960.}

16_{Jeffrey N. Cox, ‘The Living Pantheon of Poets in 1820: Pantheon or Canon?’, in The Cambridge}

Companion to British Romanticism, edited by Stuart Curran, Cambridge, Cambridge University

Press, 2010, p. 11.

17_{T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, cit., p. 152.} 18_{Ivi, p. 151.} 19_{Ivi, p. 154.} 20_{Ivi, pp. 152-153.} 21_{Ivi, p. 155.} 22_{Ivi, p. 156.} 23_{Ivi, p. 158.}

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Another important record of T.S. Eliot’s anti-Romanticism is represented by the volume The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism24, appeared in 1933 and consisting of Eliot’s Harvard lectures of 1932-33. In dedicating a series of monographic essays to the most important Romantic poets and some of their Victorian epigones, Eliot can extensively express his diffidence towards them. Dealing with Coleridge and Wordsworth, for example, he acknowledges their initial value, but he also suggests how inspiration left them very soon25_{. In particular,}

Coleridge is accused of having taken too many a “flight of abstruse reasoning”26_,

following the speculations of the German Romantic philosophers. As a matter of fact, only Keats is cleared from any accusation of excessive theorisation, considered unfit for the boundaries of artistic creation: his mainly aesthetical interests allow Eliot to champion him as the best, though unripe, example of poetry of the period27.

Differently from the said authors28, always portrayed in a shady combination of praise and aversion, a far more fierce and embittered attack is hurled against Shelley. T.S. Eliot’s definition of this Romantic author as adolescent in enthusiasm and ideas29 is widely notorious, as well as his judgement over the latter. Shelley’s ideas are “repellent”30_{to Eliot: firstly, he finds them confused and abstract,}

immature at their most; moreover, it is not possible for him to disentangle them from Shelley’s actual poetry31_{. The incumbrance and instability of thought is thus}

conflated with the lack of artistic control, making Shelley a quintessential figure of Hulme’s and Babbitt’s definition of the Romantic temper. Moreover, the fact that most of Shelley’s philosophical and political opinions are drawn from the anti-religious and radically progressive Godwin surely represents a further issue for the

24_{T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to}

Poetry in England, London, Faber and Faber, 1985.

25_{Ivi, p. 69.} 26_{Ivi, p. 77.} 27_{Ivi, pp. 100-102.}

28_{Eliot’s evaluation of Byron is conveyed by a simple statement: “Scott, and Byron in his more}

popular works, were merely society entertainers” (ivi, p. 87). Though almost absent in the critical discussion of The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, this poet will be discussed and dismissed in a later essay (1937) in On Poetry and Poets. Eliot’s remark that “Byron write[s] a dead or dying language” (T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, London, Faber and Faber, 1990, p 201) is a formal weakness enough to make him disapprove Byron’s poetic feeling and his “intermittent philosophizing” (ibid.).

29_{Ivi, pp. 88-89.} 30_{Ivi, p. 89.} 31_{Ivi, pp. 91-92.}

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conservative Eliot32. However, other causes may have contributed to such a violent rejection: as Lowe argues, “[t]he assault on Shelley sounds like one fuelled more by prejudice than rational argument”33_{. As a strong juvenile approbation for Shelley}

and the other Romantics is admitted by Eliot34 and documented in his first works, it is possible “to see this lecture on the Romantic poet as a reaction against a feeling of intense affinity, which Eliot wishes to renounce in the same way that he renounces other elements of his life”35_{. Even though it is not possible to}

appropriately discuss this point here, it is worth noticing how this personal aspect could have influenced Eliot’s reception of Shelley’s poetry.

As a matter of fact, though aligning himself with Babbitt’s and Hulme’s political, aesthetical and philosophical rejection of Romanticism, Eliot’s critical evaluation of the Romantics demonstrates a wide interest and a deep connection between him and his precursors. In the first place, he acknowledges that these poets had never ceased to ‘haunt’ and influence their epigones and the present generation of artists36. By stating that “[t]he only cure for romanticism is to analyse it”37, Eliot recognises that facing and challenging Romanticism was an unavoidable concern for any writer of his age. Besides, it is important to note how

the path of Eliot’s criticism of the romantics and their successors opens out rather than closes up over the course of his career; he finds more to take an interest in each time he renews his acquaintance with those poets, and his willingness to renew the acquaintances strengthens38_.

Because of that, it is possible to see how multifarious and complex the relationship between the Modernist artist and the Romantics is, shaped as it is by a continual blend of rejections and inevitable influences.

32_{Ivi, p. 90.}

33_{Peter James Lowe, op. cit., p. 10.}

34_{“Thereupon I took the usual adolescent course with Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rossetti, Swinburne”,}

T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry

in England, cit., p. 33.

35_{Peter James Lowe, op. cit., p. 12.}

36_{“[B]ecause we never learned to criticize Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth (poets of assured though}

modest merit), Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth punish us from their graves with the annual scourge of the Georgian anthology”, T.S. Eliot, cited in Louis Menand, op. cit., p. 33.

37_{T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, cit., p. 31.} 38_{Louis Menand, op. cit., p. 38.}

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To conclude this brief review over the reception of Romanticism at the dawn of the Modernist movement, it is possible to summarise some of the points that characterise Joyce’s position as well. Firstly, in this period, almost any critical discussion over this theme seems to be rooted in the traditional idea of a universal opposition between a Classic and a Romantic worldview. Simply to mention a further example, another major critic of the period, Ezra Pound, observed that “[s]peaking generally, the spells or equations of ‘classic’ art invoke the beauty of the normal, and spells of ‘Romantic’ art are said to invoke the beauty of the unusual”39_{. This binary system was not only related to art and literature, but often}

expanded to epitomizes many different political, religious and philosophical standpoints. In general, then, the Classic pole was favoured by the mindset of the period. However, the final assessment on the different Romantic writers was also understandably influenced by other personal and idiosyncratic factors, as it becomes clear as soon as Joyce’s case is considered.

1.2 James Joyce, Romanticism and the Romantics

Joyce’s direct critical interest towards Romanticism and the Romantics can be dated back to a period that goes from 1898, his matriculation year at university, to the last outcomes of his career as a lecturer and journalist in Trieste in 1912. As Wall suggests, a turning point of his non-fictional production can be se set in 1904, when Joyce left Ireland for the continent40. Previously in that year, Joyce also began to work to his first autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero, whose surviving parts are significantly related to the critical writings of these years. Indeed, in this novel, the great range of intertextual references to these essays account for the importance of the ideas therein contained, even though, as it will be explained in the next chapter, shades of ironic distancing can be clearly perceived in the fictionalisation of Joyce’s critical conceptions. Nonetheless, then, the narrative prominence given to the

39 _{Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance, London, Peter Owen, 1970, p. 14. Nevertheless, Pound warns}

against the use of such outworn terms: “I have used the term ‘classic’ in connection with Latinity: in the course of this book I shall perhaps be tempted to use the word ‘romantic’ ; both terms are snares, and one must not be confused by them. […] Certain qualities and certain furnishings are germane to all fine poetry; there is no need to call them either classic or romantic”, ivi, p. 13.

40_{Richard Wall, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Critic a Study of the Critical Writings of James}

Joyce, 1896-1904, University of Calgary, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1966.

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composition and submission of Stephen Daedalus’ essay should be a reason enough to include them in any analysis of Stephen Hero.

The main Dublin essays that will then be conflated in the one delivered by novel’s protagonist are “Drama and Life” (1900; CW 23-30) and ‘‘James Clarence Mangan’’ (1902; CW 53-60). In this first period of activity as a critical writer, Joyce wrote about many subjects, ranging from visual art41 to literature and theatre, championing Ibsen’s plays42_{and condemning the negative reactions to Yeats’ The}

Countess Kathleen in the “The Day of the Rabblement” (CW 50-52). With these

undertakings, “[t]he young author wanted to carve a reputation as a stylish polemicist, an opinionated and thoroughly modern innovator”43; often, as Clare goes on explaining, this ambition had the priority over any of his actual thesis. Nevertheless, though bounteously ornate and stylistically complex, these essays represent a fundamental insight over Joyce’s early literary theories, often directly connected to the idea of Romanticism and its definition. Likewise, the long series of book reviews written by Joyce during his Paris stay in 1902-1903 and later in Dublin remains as a momentous record of the wide range of literary interests of the young critic.

Besides, during the long span of time in which Joyce composed his unaccomplished Bildungsroman and then radically transformed it into A Portrait of

the Artist as a Young Man, his non-fictional and critical production continued. After

his flight to Trieste in 1904, he wrote various contributions for Il Piccolo della Sera and held several lectures at the Università Popolare. His overall condition of exile, the different public and the new language employed, Italian, tempered Joyce’s style44 and positions, even though his views remained mainly coherent to the earlier ones. Together with a long series of articles and lectures over the story and the political situation of Ireland, Joyce’s went on writing about literature, and in particular Romantic literature. For example, he translated and reworked his essay about Mangan in order to prepare a lecture (then undelivered) about this Irish

41_{As in “Royal Hibernian Academy ‘Ecce Homo’ (CW 17-22).} 42_{In “Ibsen’s New Drama” (CW 30-49).}

43_{Aingeal Clare, ‘“Pseudostylic Shamiana”: James Joyce and James Clarence Mangan’, Joyce}

Studies Annual, vol. 2009, 2009, pp. 248–265, p. 249.

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Romantic poet45, and wrote for his Italian audience about Blake46, Oscar Wilde47 and George Bernard Shaw48.

In addition, during these years of great artistic and personal turmoil, many other sources can be used to reconstruct Joyce’s conception of Romanticism and his reception of Romantic writers. The author’s younger brother, Stanislaus Joyce, bear witness of this period in his memories of his brother49, very often mentioning and commenting on his readings and literary interests. Some scattered references in Joyce’s notes and personal correspondence, then, are often used by critics to reconstruct the scattered mass of his manifold influences. One of the danger that should be avoided, though, is that of overtly extrapolating certain references from their own context, assigning to them a role they probably were not meant to have. To conclude with, some remarks made by Joyce to other personalities50 in a later period of his life can be mentioned, in an attempt to understand better the evolution of Joyce’s position after his activity as a literary critic suddenly ended, more or less in the years in which he was publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Regarding that, a further remark is due. Having introduced this study by an analysis of the reception of Romanticism by critics such as T.S. Eliot, it should be pointed out that Joyce’s critical writings fundamentally differ from those of other contemporaries. To begin with, as Joyce was beginning to analyse these questions at the very turn of the century, widely before Babbitt’s or Hulme’s work were published, no direct correlation can be implied, even though some of their evaluations are strikingly similar. Moreover, Joyce’s criticism is much less systematic than that of the other critics hereby mentioned. As Norris points out, “[a]fter his earliest adult years he wrote virtually no criticism, nor was inclined to speak openly to the journalists and casual acquaintances who repeatedly sought to discover his view”51_{. His critical insights, occasional and diverse as they are,}

45_{“Giacomo Clarenzio Mangan” (CW 259-268).}

46_{“Verismo ed idealismo nella letteratura inglese (Daniele Defoe e William Blake)” (CW 269-285).} 47_{“Oscar wide: il poeta di ‘Salomè’” (CW 233-237).}

48_{“La battaglia tra Bernard Shaw e la censura” (CW 225-227).} 49_{Stanislaus Joyce, op. cit.}

50_{Mainly, Arthur Power (Conversations with James Joyce, Dublin, Lilliput Press, 1999) and Frank}

Budgen (James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, and Other Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972).

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fundamentally differ from the systematic and historicised analysis of T.S. Eliot, and they do not record any further evolution of Joyce’s thinking beyond his early years. Far from representing an accomplished theory of literature, nonetheless, these essays and articles can give a quite unique insight and enough sources to enrich the reading of Joyce’s fictional work as an artist52_.

For these reasons, Joyce’s definition of Romanticism will be dealt with great care not only in the analysis of his actual critical statements, but also examining how Joyce’s sources were deeply rooted in the long tradition of the 19th_century

reception of the Romantic movement. Victorian criticism, and movements such as continental Symbolism or Aestheticism were deeply rooted in the ideas and artistic belief of the Romantic Age, and had a crucial role in Joyce’s formation. Moreover, great importance must be accounted to Joyce’s Irish context in this crucial years of his country cultural and national history. The Irish Revival, indeed, was the main component of Joyce’s cultural background, tying together the legacy of Romantic literature with a strong nationalistic and popular component. As a matter of fact, then, being widely moulded from Romantic influences and clichés, popular literature as a whole cannot be ignored in order to fully understand Joyce’s conception of Romanticism. Only after having considered these fundamental premises, thus, it will be possible to analyse Joyce’s position over single Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Blake. James Clarence Mangan’s case, because of the role of quintessential Irish Romantic Joyce grants him, will be examined last, as he seems to sum up many features pertaining Joyce’s definition of the Romantic temper.

1.2.1 “The romantic temper, imperfect and impatient as it is”

On 1st_{February 1902, right before his twentieth birthday}53_{, Joyce delivered in front}

of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin his at-the-time much discussed paper about James Clarence Mangan. Since the beginning, it is

52_{Stanislaus’ memories illustrate this point very clearly by stating that these essays were carefully}

written by Joyce not only “to emerge from the ruck of students, but because he was fully conscious of having something to say that would clarify his claims as an artist”, Stanislaus Joyce, op. cit., p. 128.

53_{Gordon Bowker, James Joyce: A New Biography, New York, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012,}

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clear that the main aim of Joyce’s essay was not only that of giving a critical reading of the Irish lyrical poet, but to produce an account of his developing theories on art and the figure of the artist. These theories, besides, were fundamentally based on a Classical-Romantic opposition, as the opening sentences of his paper demonstrates:

[i]t is many a day since the dispute of the classical and romantic schools began in the quiet city of the arts, so that criticism, which has wrongly decided that the classical temper is the romantic temper grown older, has been driven to recognize these as constant states of mind (CW 53).

In this passage, it is already possible to identify the main point of the formerly discussed dichotomy. The two literary tendencies are taken as broad, transhistorical categories, not confined to the sphere of art but constantly present in the human mindset. As Pound does, then, Joyce acknowledges that this struggle has often become no more than a “dispute about names, […] a confused battle” (CW 53), and that the rims of the two attitudes are often merged together. On the contrary, when Joyce remarks that both schools had to deal with internal problems as well, “the classical school fighting the materialism which attends it, and the Romantic school to preserve coherence” (CW 53), his conception diverges from T.S. Eliot’s. As a matter of fact, for the Anglo-American critic, the excesses of Romanticism could be defined as both “escape from the world of fact, and devotion to brute fact”54_.

Because of that, “[t]he two great currents of the nineteenth century – vague emotionalism and the apotheosis of science (realism)”55 have to be connected to a Romantic conception of literature. For Joyce, on the contrary, materialism, and thus allegedly realism, was to be referred to Classicism: this point, as it will be discussed later, will be of great importance in the later development of the Irish writer.

Nevertheless, as early as his Mangan essay, Joyce’s general definition of Romanticism can be clearly related to that of other Modernist writers.

The romantic school is often and grievously misinterpreted, not more by others than by its own, for that impatient temper which, as it could see no fit abode here for its ideals, chose to behold them under insensible figures, comes to disregard certain limitations, and, because these figures are blown high and low by the mind that conceived them, comes at times to regard them as feeble shadows moving aimlessly about the light, obscuring it (CW 53).

54_{T.S. Eliot, cited in Jean-Michel Rabaté, op. cit., p. 217.} 55_Ibid.

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Exceeding the boundaries necessary to outline the work of art, Romantic art is not able to control its metaphysical and spiritual content. Impatience is the main fault found by Joyce in the Romantic school, the incapability of achieving a suitable form in order to express its often incongruous Romantic ideals: as a matter of fact, “the cause of the impatient temper must be sought in the artist and in his theme” (CW 53). Even more interesting, then, is the reference to the semantic fields of sight and light, that will become almost a Leitmotiv in Joyce’s reception of Romanticism. The oxymoronic idea of beholding something insensible and the antithetic reference to shadows and obscured light directly imply that, more than a mere question of artistic creation, the Romantic temperament can define an overall misguiding perspective on reality. Indeed,

the same temper […] exclaims that the light is changed to worse than shadow, to darkness even, by any method which bends upon these present things and so works upon them and fashions them that the quick intelligence may go beyond them to their meaning, which is still unuttered (CW 53).

Though almost paradoxically denied by the Romantic standpoint, the more ‘materialistic’, ‘realistic’ method here implied, the Classical one, is clearly favoured by Joyce. Indeed, out of the mystification of the Romantic impatience, this direct insight is the only one which is actually able to go beyond reality without overstepping it, in order to achieve a further degree of comprehension.

In truth, even in these early critical writings, Joyce’s highly fashioned and complex prose is not exempt from a certain degree of ambiguity. A generalized misinterpretation of the Romantic school is immediately denounced, as a way of hedging any further discussion. The blamed temperamental impatience is in fact the main feature Romanticism is usually associated with, not originally and exclusively inherent to it. Because of that, the author only states that “the highest praise must be withheld from the romantic school” (CW 53), implying that some kind of appraisal would still be possible. A further hedging feature is then the remark that “the most enlightened of Western poets be thereby passed over” (CW 53), a mention which will be further discussed later, as Stanislaus Joyce expounds it as a covert reference to Blake56_{. At present, a discrepancy can be already noticed}

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between the disapproving definition of Romanticism and the favourable reception of an individual figure.

This general definition of Romanticism is often more or less covertly exploited and developed by Joyce in the critical writings of those years, until its reappearance in Stephen Hero, that will be examined in the next chapter57_{. For}

example, it reoccurs in a 1903 review to Catilina (CW 71-73), a Romantic juvenile play of Henrik Ibsen, an author notoriously championed by Joyce throughout his life. Despite his great admiration for the Norwegian playwright, Joyce denounces the flaws of this early work: the characters are mere types, shadows meant to depict a too dogmatic political meaning. These problems are obviously related to the ascendancy of Romanticism over the young author in a particularly intense period, as the play was written in 1848. In this context, Joyce again refers to the Classical and Romantic dichotomy in these terms:

here is the most striking difference between Ibsen's earlier manner and his later manner, between romantic work and classical work. The romantic temper, imperfect and impatient as it is, cannot express itself adequately unless it employs the monstrous or heroic (CW 72).

Again, thus, the Romantic temper is accused of dealing with too vague and idealistic character types, while drawing from real ones should be the “principle of all patient and perfect art” (CW 72-73). Besides, even though the Romantic manner of Ibsen’s early works is shown as a phase that the artist necessarily must overcome, Joyce admits that a ‘Romantic’ masterpiece such as Peer Gynt can be achieved by “pushing lawlessness to its extreme limits”. Suitably exploited, the Romantic temper has a fundamental creative role in the formation of the artist. More importantly, then, it may be worth noticing the use of two terms, ‘hero’ and ‘monster’, that will acquire a fundamental role when Joyce, less than one year after this review, will begin to work on his autobiographical novel, namely Stephen Hero.

Considering the early importance given by Joyce to this definition, its sources should be more deeply analysed. Among the authors Joyce knew, Walter

57_{As Groden points out, “[t]he distinction […] between the classical and romantic tempers, with}

Stephen’s strong endorsement of the classical temper, has for years provided a useful entrance into Joyce’s works from Dubliners at least through Ulysses” (Michael Groden, ‘James Joyce and the Classical, Romantic, and Medieval Tempers’. Modern British Literature, vol. 5, no. 1–2, 1980, p. 11).

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Pater surely seems to be a major inspiration. Pater’s influence over the Irish author in the early years of his career has been widely recognised. For instance, Harold Bloom points out Pater’s importance in the definition of the Joycean concept of epiphany58 in Stephen Hero, but the influence of Paterian prose is identifiable in A

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well, though in a more ironic, detached

way59. Joyce’s early essays, then, bear the mark of the Oxonian critic: as Stanislaus remembers, the Mangan article “was written in a Romantic vein and in a prose which shows the influence of Pater”60_{. Indeed, if the beginning of the “Postscript”}

to Pater’s collection of critical writings Appreciations, with an Essay on Style (1889) is considered, it is possible to acknowledge how direct its influence over Joyce’s paper is:

[t]he words classical and romantic, although, like many other critical expressions, sometimes abused by those who have understood them too vaguely or too absolutely, yet define two real tendencies in the history of art and literature. Used in an exaggerated sense, to express a greater opposition between those tendencies than really exists, they have at times tended to divide people of taste into opposite camps61_.

The same kind of hedging remarks can be found in the introducing sentence of the Mangan essay, pointing out the role of the critical tradition and its mistakes and exaggerations, while the image of the ‘opposite camps’ probably inspired Joyce’s “dispute […] in the quiet city of the arts” (CW 52). Apart from these formal features, besides, the idea of a distinction between two universal general tempers and their overall definition unites Joyce’s insight to Pater’s. In contrast, then, the English critic is more neutral in his final evaluation, avoiding condemning the Romantic temper as inferior or deficient. In fact, while “the addition of strangeness to beauty […] constitutes the Romantic character in art”62_{, it is an exaggerated}

58_{Harold Bloom, ‘Introduction to James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, in Id.}

(ed.), James Joyce’s: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, Chelsea House Pub, 1988, p. 2.

59_{John Paul Riquelme, ‘Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, in The}

Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, edited by Derek Attridge, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2004, p. 106. See also Timothy Webb, op. cit., p. 32; Harry Levin, ‘Joyce’s Portrait’, in James Joyce: Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A Casebook, edited by Morris Beja, London, Macmillan, 1973, p. 20.

60_{Stanislaus Joyce, op. cit., p. 56.}

61_{Walter Pater, Three Major Texts, edited by William E. Buckler, New York, New York University}

Press, 1986, p. 538.

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Classicism that may negatively become a synonym of obtuse traditionalism63. Pater is more troubled by the excesses these tendencies can be brought to by critics and artists64: in this, again, Joyce’s idea of the Romantic temper being “often and grievously misinterpreted, not more by others than by its own” (CW 52) can be seen as foreshadowed by Pater’s essay.

Yet, another fundamental point can be drawn from the analysis of Pater’s essay and its influence over Joyce: the complexity and multi-layered nature of the whole 19th_{-century cultural response to Romanticism. For example, among the}

sources mentioned by Pater in his “Postscript”, Heinrich Heine’s Die romantische

Schule (1835), seems to be given a fundamental role65. Heine was deeply plunged into the early Romantic atmosphere, having attended A.W. Schlegel’s and Hegel’s courses at university. Nevertheless, his reaction against Romanticism had been one of the first and fiercest. The Romantic temper, deeply connected with medieval Catholic spirituality, is condemned by the German poet as reactionary, unhealthily unrealistic and fundamentally inhuman66. More importantly, besides, in his work it is possible to retrieve many of the elements hereby examined: the transhistorical struggle between the Classical and Romantic attitudes towards life and art, the hazy nature of the Romantic temper and the necessity of plastically well-crafted art67. Similarly, then, Heine’s long exposition can be traced back to Goethe’s influence, and his trenchant equivalence between the Romantic temper and sickness, opposed to salubrious Classicism68. Therefore, as Laman suggest, Joyce’s discussion over the Romantic and Classical tempers can be surely related to Goethe’s position at the dawning of the Romantic Age69, but it is clear that any original insight over this period has to be considered as mediated by a whole century of lively debate.

Because of these reasons, in order to achieve a more complete insight over Joyce’s reception of Romanticism, it is necessary to consider the profound

63_{Ivi, pp. 538-539.} 64_{Ivi, p. 541.} 65_{Ivi, pp. 539; 543.}

66_{Heinrich Heine, Die romantische Schule, edited by Helga Weidmann, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2002,}

pp. 9-20.

67_{Ivi, pp. 16-17.}

68_{Johann W. Goethe, cited in Barbara Laman, James Joyce and German Theory: The Romantic}

School and All That, Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004, pp. 23-24.

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correlation between this “everpresent, […] enduring principle […] in the artistic temperament”70_{and the Irish author’s cultural and social background. Romanticism}

had so deeply shaped the culture of the 19th century that its own reception was inevitably intertwined with that of the artists and movements it contributed to form. Indeed, although he theorises about the idea of a constant and universal Romantic temper, Joyce remains also well aware of the different historical declinations of this temper, and willing to confront them. Surely known to him was Oscar Wilde’s famous aphorism, “the nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass”71: being born in a profoundly Victorian Dublin72, Joyce himself was deeply plunged into the cultural atmosphere of the period. Moreover, his personal choices in terms of artistic development brought him in touch with many strongly romantic-related European movements, such as the French Symbolist or Aestheticism. As this continental shift was merely meant as a reaction to the peculiar situation of Ireland’s intellectual life, dominated by the highly romanticised atmosphere of the Celtic Revival, Joyce’s relationship with this national movement and some of his members cannot be ignored. Equally, as Joyce’s youth coincided as well with a strong booming of popular literature, the mediation that this form of culture had over his conception of Romanticism must be considered, as this aspect had a high resounding in his fictional works. Because of that, the following paragraphs will be devoted to a brief review over Joyce’s response to the different declensions and epigones of what the young author defined as the Romantic school.

To begin with, it is possible to notice that Joyce’s attitude towards the grand tradition of Victorian literature and criticism is shaped by both a strong direct rejection and a more covert pillaging. As a matter of fact, Joyce’s early prose writings were a “deliberate imitation of Carlyle, Newman, Macaulay, De Quincey,

70_{Walter Pater, op. cit., p. 539.}

71_{Oscar Wilde, The Major Works, edited by Isobel Murray, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008,}

p. 48. Joyce quotes and alters this sentence in Ulysses (U 6), voiced by Mulligan in reference to Stephen Dedalus.

72_{See Tracey Teets Schwarze, Joyce and the Victorians, Gainesville, University Press of Florida,}