Down in Jungleland: A Study of Urban Literature in James Joyce and William Carlos Williams

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to discuss the concept of “Urban Literature” and the influence of the city in different fields and writers, mainly focusing on the comparison between two opposite countries at the turn of the 20th century: United States of America and Ireland. My main argument is that the city is considered a fundamental protagonist in literature, often more predominant and influential than any other literary character, and analysing its central role and influence in the 19th-and-20th-centuries literary backgrounds of two countries which present different attitudes and histories seems crucial within this topic. In the introductive part, different selected critical approaches which focus on the nature of urbanism and urban literature are discussed and examined considering the various fields which they belong to. Moving on to the analysis of the specific works, the selection was made following a precise pattern, in which the American author focuses on a poetic of the city always evolving but still deeply rooted in the concepts of history and environment, whereas the Irish author considers the city as a psychologically and sociologically active entity in the character’s reality. Therefore, the second chapter focuses on the contribution to urban literature given by James Joyce's vision of Dublin in Ulysses, whereas the third chapter concentrates on the debate regarding the suburban environment represented by the city of Paterson in William Carlos Williams' long poem. Finally, the last chapter briefly introduces the reader to the concept of “cinematic city" through a selection of movies in which the city is a solid character and – in a similar manner to the literary works discussed in the previous chapters – it embraces both authors and audience. Hopefully, this thesis will contribute to the discourse on urban literature clarifying the role of the city in literature and establishing the importance of the urban experience for the authors of the 20th century. Particularly at the turn of the century, the often misjudged image of the city and the complexity of urban life have developed into active entities within the literary context, thus making it difficult for scholars to talk about “urban literature” as an affirmed literary genre.