Virginia Woolf and James Joyce were both modernist writers who shared several similarities in their experimental narrative techniques and themes of alienation, despair, and loneliness depicted in their characters' lives. However, Joyce's writing was even more experimental with his characters taking on mythic dimensions not seen in Woolf's works. Additionally, religious torment was a stronger theme in Joyce's works while Woolf explored more themes like feminism and the impacts of war and neurosis. Joyce's characters were also more victims of their inner circumstances compared to Woolf's characters who attempted to adapt to outer conditions.

1. Virginia Woolf vs
James Joyce
Similarities and differences

2. Similarities
• Both of them were Modernist writers
shaping their own tongue to convey new
emotions and states of mind
• Alienation, folly, despair, a passive attitude
seem to prevail in their characters' lives
• A sort of loneliness all characters seem to
be destined despite their social contacts

3. Similarities
• Time dilation: chronological time doesn't
correspond to internal time, use of
flashbacks
• Plots lose their relevance in fiction
• Both of the writers start from realism but
as well they go beyond it to achieve a sort
of psychological realism
•

4. Similarities
• The narrator is always limited with an
internal perspective of the characters' mind
• Stream of consciousness technique
• A sort of detachment seems to prevail

5. Similarities
• A sense of doom seems to prevail
• A peculiar use of symbols to capture the
reader and engage him/her in multiple
interpretations
• Experimental narrative technique

6. Differences

7. • Joyce's narrative technique is more
experimental than the one used by V. Woolf
who maintains a sort of logical order
• V. Woolf's characters never acquire a myth
dimension as the ones by Joyce in Ulysses
• The religious torment which characterizes
Joyce's characters, the moral conflict is not
so visible in the ones by V. Woolf

8. • V. Woolf's characters belong to the upper
class whereas the ones by Joyce are middle
or low class deeply connected to Dublin
• Paralysis and escape as themes seem to
prevail in Joyce whereas in Woolf a larger
stock of themes is portrayed as feminism,
ambiguity, war, neurosis.
• Joyce's characters seem fixed in their
perspective of the outer world
experience epiphanies

9. • Joyce's characters are more victims of
themselves rather than of outer
circumstances, even despite their
epiphanies
• Most
characters by V. Woolf try a way to
react to the outer conditions by adaptation
• Moments of being are a sort of revelation
which help characters cope with reality

10. • Joyce's characters are more victims of
themselves rather than of outer
circumstances, even despite their
epiphanies
• Most
characters by V. Woolf try a way to
react to the outer conditions by adaptation
• Moments of being are a sort of revelation
which help characters cope with reality