Percezione e teoria del tempo

Verifica interdisciplinare

Uno dei grandi cambiamenti che hanno avuto enorme influenza sul pensiero filosofico e scientifico dell’inizio di questo secolo riguarda il concetto di tempo. Con la Teoria della Relatività di Einstein infatti non solo varia la definizione del tempo, ma anche il suo rapporto con lo spazio.

Naturalmente anche il mondo della cultura risentì fortemente di questi cambiamenti che insieme alle teorie psicanalitiche di Freud portarono a forme di sperimentazione che cambiarono completamente la composizione delle opere d’arte.

The passage here proposed is taken from Ulysses which is considered the masterpiece of James Joyce, one of the most significant writers of the first part of the 20th century. He brought experimentation in novel writing to its extremes, using the technique of the interior monologue to express his characters flow of thoughts.

[…] ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose me yes first I gave him a bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain ye so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up the dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbens like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows or the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little street and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breast all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad yes I said yes I will Yes. (James Joyce, Episode 18, in Ulysses, 1922)

1. In the passage you read (tick the correct answer):

a. The punctuation is

– present

– scarcely used

– absent

b. The syntax is

– present

– absent

c. The events are

– following the flow of thoughts

– in chronological order

d. The language is

– spoken

– thought

– written

e. The narrator is

– third person omniscient

– third person unobtrusive

– first person

2. According to what you know on Joyces writing technique, how do you think his stream of consciousness” was influenced by the new theories about the concept of time?

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3. Scrivi una breve definizione dei concetti di fenomeno fisico reversibile e di fenomeno fisico irreversibile (max 150 parole):

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4. Quale dei seguenti settori della fisica classica dedica una particolare attenzione allo studio dei fenomeni irreversibili:

a) meccanica;

b) ottica;

c) termodinamica;

d) elettromagnetismo.

5. Rispondi ai seguenti quesiti vero/falso.

6. Descrivi (max 200 parole) in modo sintetico, la critica di Bergson alla scienza moderna, con particolare riferimento alla relazione tempo-durata.

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