The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. Joyce felt Irish nationalism, like Catholicism and British rule of Ireland, was responsible for a collective paralysis.[2] He conceived of Dubliners as a "nicely polished looking-glass"[3] held up to the Irish and a "first step towards [their] spiritual liberation".[4]
Joyce's concept of epiphany[5] is exemplified in the moment a character experiences self-understanding or illumination. The first three stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, while the subsequent stories are written in the third person and deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people, in line with Joyce's division of the collection into "childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life".[6] Many of the characters in Dubliners later appeared in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses.[7]
Publication history
Between 1905, when Joyce first sent a manuscript to a publisher, and 1914, when the book was finally published (on June 15), Joyce submitted the book 18 times to a total of 15 publishers. The London house of Grant Richards agreed to publish it in 1905. Its printer, however, refused to set one of the stories ("Two Gallants"), and Richards then began to press Joyce to remove a number of other passages that he claimed the printer also refused to set. Under protest, Joyce eventually agreed to some of the requested changes, but Richards ended up backing out of the deal anyway. Joyce thereupon resubmitted the manuscript to other publishers, and, about three years later (1909), he found a willing candidate in Maunsel & Roberts of Dublin. A similar controversy developed, and Maunsel too refused to publish the collection, even threatening to sue Joyce for printing costs already incurred. Joyce offered to pay the printing costs himself if the sheets were turned over to him and he was allowed to complete the job elsewhere and distribute the book, but, when he arrived at the printers, they refused to surrender the sheets and burned them the next day, though Joyce managed to save one copy, which he obtained "by ruse". He returned to submitting the manuscript to other publishers, and in 1914 Grant Richards once again agreed to publish the book, using the page proofs saved from Maunsel as copy.[8]
The stories
"The Sisters" – After the priest Father Flynn dies, a young boy who was close to him hears some less-than-flattering stories about the father.
"An Encounter" – Two schoolboys playing truant encounter a perverted, middle-aged man.
"Araby" – A boy falls in love with the sister of his friend, but fails in his quest to buy her a worthy gift from the Araby Bazaar.
"Eveline" – A young woman weighs her decision to flee Ireland with a sailor.
"After the Race" – College student Jimmy Doyle tries to fit in with his wealthy friends.
"Two Gallants" – Lenehan wanders around Dublin to kill time while waiting to hear if his friend, Corley, was able to con a maid out of some money.
"The Boarding House" – Mrs Mooney successfully manoeuvres her daughter Polly into an upwardly mobile marriage with her lodger Mr Doran.
"A Little Cloud" – Little Chandler's dinner with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher, who left home to become a journalist in London, casts fresh light on his own failed literary dreams.
"Counterparts" – Farrington, a lumbering alcoholic scrivener, takes out his frustration in pubs and on his son Tom.
"A Mother" – To win a place of pride for her daughter Kathleen in the Irish Revival, Mrs. Kearney arranges for the girl to be accompanist at a series of poorly planned concerts, but her efforts backfire.
"Grace" – Mr Kernan passes out and falls down the stairs at a bar, so his friends attempt to convince him to come to a Catholicretreat to help him reform.
"The Dead" – After a holiday party thrown by his aunts and cousin, Gabriel Conroy's wife, Gretta, tells him about a boyfriend from her youth, and he has an epiphany about life and death and human connection. (At 15–16,000 words, this story has been classified as a novella.)
Style
Besides first-person and third-person narration, Dubliners employs free indirect discourse and shifts in narrative point of view. The collection progresses chronologically, beginning with stories of youth and progressing in age to culminate in "The Dead".[9] Throughout, Joyce can be said to maintain "invisibility", to use his own term for authorial effacement.[10] He wrote the stories "in a style of scrupulous meanness", withholding comment on what is "seen and heard".[11]Dubliners can be seen as a preface to the two novels that will follow,[12] and like them it "seeks a presentation so sharp that comment by the author would be interference".[13]
Joyce's modernist style entailed using dashes for dialogue rather than quotation marks.[14] He asked that they be used in the printed text, but was refused.[15]Dubliners was the only work by Joyce to use quotation marks, but dashes are now substituted in all critical and most popular editions.[16]
The impersonal narration doesn't mean that Joyce is undetectable in Dubliners. There are autobiographical elements and possible versions of Joyce had he not left Dublin.[17] The Dublin he remembers is recreated in the specific geographic details, including road names, buildings, and businesses. Joyce freely admitted that his characters and places were closely based on reality. (Because of these details, at least one potential publisher, Maunsel and Company, rejected the book for fear of libel lawsuits.)[18]Ezra Pound argued that, with the necessary changes, "these stories could be retold of any town", that Joyce "gives us things as they are... for any city", by "getting at the universal element beneath" particulars.[19]
Joyce referred to the collection as "a series of epicleti", alluding to the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.[20] He is said to have "often agreed... that 'imagination is nothing but the working over of what is remembered'".[21] But he used the eucharist as a metaphor, characterizing the artist as "a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life".[22]
The theme of Dubliners, “what holds [the stories] together and makes them a book [is] hinted on the first page,” the “paralysis” or “living death” of which Joyce spoke in a letter of 1904.[23][24]
The concept of "epiphany", defined in Stephen Hero as "a sudden spiritual manifestation", has been adapted as a narrative device in five stories in Dubliners, in the form of a character’s self-realization at the end of the narrative. One critic has suggested that the concept is the basis of an overall narrative strategy, "the commonplace things of Dublin [becoming] embodiments or symbols . . . of paralysis".[25] A later critic, avoiding the term "epiphany", but apparently not the concept, has examined in considerable detail how “church and state manifest themselves in Dubliners” as agents of paralysis.[26] There are numerous such "manifestations".[27]
What immediately distinguishes the stories from Joyce's later works is their apparent simplicity and transparency. Some critics have been led into drawing facile conclusions. The stories have been pigeonholed, seen as realist or naturalist, or instead labeled symbolist.[28][29] The term "epiphany" has been taken as synonymous with symbol.[30] Critical analysis of elements of stories or stories in their entirety has been problematic. Dubliners may have occasioned more conflicting interpretations than any other modern literary work.[31]
It's been said that Dubliners is unique, defying any form of classification, and perhaps no interpretation can ever be conclusive. The only certainty is that it's a "masterpiece" in its own right and "a significant stepping-stone . . . into the modernist structure of Joyce's mature work".[32]
Christ in Dubliners
On 10 June 1904, Joyce met Nora Barnacle for the first time. They met again on 16 June.[33] On both days, the Feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in Irish Catholic churches.[34] The feast originated on another 16 June, in 1675. A young nun, Margaret Mary Alacoque, had visions of Christ exposing his heart. During the so-called "great apparition" on that date, he asked that a new feast be established to commemorate his suffering. (In the Library episode, Mulligan calls the nun "Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!"[35]) The Feast of the Sacred Heart was formally approved in the same year. The Jesuits popularized the devotion, and Ireland was the first nation to dedicate itself to the Sacred Heart.[36]
The young nun claimed that Christ had made 12 promises to all who would dedicate themselves to the Sacred Heart.[37] The 12th promise offers "salvation to the one who receives communion on nine consecutive First Fridays".[38] Mrs. Kiernan in the Dubliners story "Grace" and Mr. Kearney in "A Mother" try to take advantage of this promise, as did Stephen's mother.[39] A colored print of the 12 promises hangs on Eveline's wall,[40] and there are resemblances between her and Margaret Mary Alacoque and between Frank, her "open-hearted" suitor, and the Sacred Heart.[41] Both young women have been made a promise of salvation by a man professing love. Hugh Kenner argues that Frank has no intention of taking Eveline to Buenos Ayres and will seduce and abandon her in Liverpool, where the boat is actually headed.[42] Since "going to Buenos Ayres" was slang for "taking up a life of prostitution",[43] it appears that Frank does intend to take Eveline to Buenos Aires, but not to make her his wife.[44] That Eveline's print of the 12 promises made by the Sacred Heart hangs over a "broken" harmonium confirms the close similarity between the two suitors. In "Circe", the Sacred Heart devotion is concisely parodied in the apparition of Martha Clifford, Bloom's pen pal. She calls Bloom a "heartless flirt" and accuses him of "breach of promise".[45]
Media adaptations
Hugh Leonard adapted six stories as Dublin One, which was staged at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 1963.[46]
In 1987, John Huston directed a film adaptation of "The Dead", written for the screen by his son Tony and starring his daughter Anjelica as Mrs. Conroy.
In February 2014, Stephen Rea read all fifteen stories spread across twenty 13-minute segments of Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4.
In July 2014, Irish actor Carl Finnegan released a modern retelling of "Two Gallants" as a short film. Finnegan wrote the script with Darren McGrath and also produced, directed, and performed the role of Corley in the film.[49]
In May 2023, Irish folk music act Hibsen released the album The Stern Task of Living, inspired by Dubliners. The 15-track album by duo Gráinne Hunt and Jim Murphy follows the sequence of the stories in the novel, with each song based on the story after which it is named.[50]
Related Research Articles
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.
Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. Parts of it were first serialized in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is known for its allusive and experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works in literature. In 1924, it began to appear in installments under the title "fragments from Work in Progress". The final title was only revealed when the book was published on 4 May 1939.
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in Homer's epic poem: The Odyssey.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the debut novel of Irish writer James Joyce, published in 1916. A Künstlerroman written in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's fictional alter ego, whose surname alludes to Daedalus, Greek mythology's consummate craftsman. Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe. The work uses techniques that Joyce developed more fully in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
John Stanislaus Joyce was the father of writer James Joyce, and a well known Dublin man about town. The son of James and Ellen Joyce, John Joyce grew up in Cork, where his mother's family, which claimed kinship to "Liberator" Daniel O'Connell, was quite prominent.
"The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce. It is by far the longest story in the collection and, at 15,952 words, is almost long enough to be described as a novella. The story deals with themes of love and loss, as well as raising questions about the nature of the Irish identity.
Richard David Ellmann, FBA was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century. Its 1982 revised edition won James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Ellmann was a liberal humanist, and his academic work focuses on the major modernist writers of the 20th century.
"Eveline" is a short story by the Irish writer James Joyce. It was first published in 1904 by the journal Irish Homestead and later featured in his 1914 collection of short stories Dubliners. It tells the story of Eveline, a teenager who plans to leave Dublin for Argentina with her "lover".
"Araby" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. The story traces a young boy's infatuation with his friend's sister.
"The Sisters" is a short story by James Joyce, the first of a series of short stories called Dubliners. Originally published in the Irish Homestead on 13 August 1904, "The Sisters" was Joyce's first published work of fiction. Joyce later revised the story and had it, along with the rest of the series, published in book form in 1914. The story details a boy's connection with a local priest, in the context of the priest's death and reputation.
"An Encounter" is a short story by James Joyce. It is second in a collection of Joyce's short stories called Dubliners. In the story, two young boys experience an eerie encounter with a strange, old man. It deals with themes such as routine and wanderlust.
"Clay" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. It deals with the reflections of a middle-aged, unmarried woman during the course of her day.
"A Painful Case" is a short story by Irish author James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. The story details a platonic affair between an isolated man and a married woman, the breaking off of the affair, and its aftermath.
"Grace" is a short story by James Joyce written toward the end of 1905 and published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.
David Sheehy was an Irish nationalist politician. He was a member of parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1900 and from 1903 to 1918, taking his seat as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
"Two Gallants" is a short story by James Joyce published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. It tells the story of two Irishmen who are frustrated with their lack of achievement in life and rely on the exploitation of others to live. Joyce considered the story to be one of the most important in Dubliners.
Epiphany in literature refers generally to a visionary moment when a character has a sudden insight or realization that changes their understanding of themselves or their comprehension of the world. The term has a more specialized sense as a literary device distinct to modernist fiction. Author James Joyce first borrowed the religious term "Epiphany" and adopted it into a profane literary context in Stephen Hero (1904–1906), an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In that manuscript, Stephen Daedalus defines epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself." Stephen's epiphanies are moments of heightened poetic perception in the trivial aspects of everyday Dublin life, non-religious and non-mystical in nature. They become the basis of Stephen's theory of aesthetic perception as well as his writing. In similar terms, Joyce experimented with epiphany throughout his career, from the short stories he wrote between 1898 and 1904 which were central to his early work, to his late novel Finnegans Wake (1939). Scholars used Joyce's term to describe a common feature of the modernist novel, with authors as varied as Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Ezra Pound, and Katherine Mansfield all featuring these sudden moments of vision as an aspect of the contemporary mind. Joycean or modernist epiphany has its roots in nineteenth-century lyric poetry, especially the Wordsworthian "spots of time," as well as the sudden spiritual insights that formed the basis of traditional spiritual autobiography. Philosopher Charles Taylor explains the rise of epiphany in modernist art as a reaction against the rise of a "commercial-industrial-capitalist society" during the early twentieth century.
Araby is an independent short film directed by Dennis Courtney, starring Van Hughes. It was adapted from the short story "Araby" by James Joyce, which was included in his short works collection Dubliners.
Amalia Popper was the first Italian translator of James Joyce's works and author of his first biography, published as an introduction to his translation of Dubliners, published in 1935 in Trieste under the title "Araby".
References
↑ Osteen, Mark (22 June 1995). "A Splendid Bazaar: The Shopper Guide to the New Dubliners". Studies in Short Fiction.
↑ Curran, C. P. (1968). James Joyce Remembered. New York and London: Oxford University Press. p.49. ISBN0192111795. Retrieved 16 February 2024. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.
↑ Gilbert, Stuart (1957). Letters of James Joyce. New York: The Viking Press. pp.63–64. Retrieved 21 February 2024. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.
↑ Gilbert 1957, pp.62–63: I believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation in my country
↑ Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. London: Jonathan Cape. p.216. Retrieved 1 March 2024. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.
↑ Joyce, James (1916). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. B. W. Huebsch. p.252. Retrieved 18 February 2024. The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak… The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
↑ Curran, C. P. (1968). James Joyce Remembered. New York and London: Oxford University Press. p.49. ISBN0192111795. Retrieved 16 February 2024. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.
Atherton, James (1966). "The Joyce of Dubliners". In Staley, Thomas (ed.). James Joyce Today: Essays on the Major Works. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lang, Frederick K. (1993). "Ulysses" and the Irish God. Lewisburg, London, Toronto: Bucknell University Press, Associated University Presses. ISBN0838751504. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
Bosinelli Bollettieri, Rosa Maria and Harold Frederick Mosher, eds. ReJoycing: New Readings of Dubliners. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. ISBN978-0-8131-2057-7.
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