The Epiphany as the Evanescent Moment: Flashes of Unintellectual Light in James Joyce’s Dubliners » Writing Program » Boston University The Epiphany as the Evanescent Moment: Flashes of Unintellectual Light in James Joyce’s Dubliners Navraj Narula Download this essay James Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of 15 short stories, defies literary norms by breaking the original storyline format of Freytag’s pyramid, which suggests that a clear beginning consisting of a proper introduction of the setting and the characters, a middle discussing the conflict that would lead to a climax, and an end that ties the story together with a denouement are indispensable to any written work of fiction (“Analyzing a Story’s Plot: Freytag’s Pyramid”). James Joyce challenges these conventions by abruptly positioning the conflict at the start of his stories and refusing to include a resolution at the end of each one, inviting his readers to consider the cliffhanger at the end of each story in Dubliners rather than offering them a realization or, as most critics would say, an epiphany.

In fact, as relayed by Zach Bowen, the founding editor of both the James Joyce Literary Supplement and the Florida James Joyce Series, a large number of Joyce’s critics “have had something to say about [Joyce’s] epiphanies and their use” in Dubliners (103). However, these noted critics—such as Henry Levin, Thomas Connolly, and William York Tindall—only acknowledge the everyday, hackneyed definition of epiphany, that of a “revelation” or a “realization.” These critics, who solely relate the word epiphany to enlightenment, claim that the characters in Dubliners do indeed arrive at a realization at the end of each story. Upon inspecting Dubliners and its unconventional endings though, I have come to the conclusion that the figures in Joyce’s stories arrive at no revelation at all. Published in 1914, a time when Irish nationalism instilled in people a desire to discover their identities, Dubliners offers its characters no sort of realization of their life’s purposes. Instead most find themselves lost, accepting failure or unable to proceed.

Through a close reading of “Araby,” “The Boarding House,” and “Eveline,” I will, by recovering the Joycean definition of “epiphany,” demonstrate that an epiphany does not always necessarily adhere to the critical definition (or even worldly meaning) of the word as a “revelation” or a “realization.” In congruency with the Joycean definition of an epiphany as a departure from the critical definition of an epiphany, the Joycean definition does not go so far as to take action in reaching a point of realization; instead, it merely showcases the experiences of the characters in Dubliners, not drawing the reader’s attention to any sort of profound revelation. While many critics claim that what Joyce meant by an epiphany is a realization, I will argue that what Joyce meant by an epiphany is simply an unrevealing experience.

In Stephen Hero, Joyce’s posthumously published autobiographical novel, he relates that an epiphany is a “sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself” (Stephen Hero 211), believing that these epiphanies must be recorded “with extreme care, seeing that they [epiphanies] themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments” (211). Florence L. Walzi, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who is an expert on the early works of Joyce, examines the etymology of the word “epiphany,” indicating that the basic meaning of epiphany in Greek is an “appearance” or “manifestation” related to a verb meaning “to display or show forth” (436). Then, Walzi goes even further to say that this basic meaning of an epiphany “reflects the later sense of the word as a revelation,” deeming it “a flash of intellectual light” (436).

While Walzi, like most critics, extends the definition of “epiphany” beyond its basic meaning, I am hesitant to leap from “appearance” or “manifestation” all the way to “revelation.” Joyce explicitly defines an epiphany as a “manifestation,” suggesting that an epiphany has the tendency to make a person aware of something, but not actually realize the significance of it, not struck by any “flash of intellectual light.” Joyce also asserts that an epiphany is defined by “moments.” In doing so, Joyce suggests that an epiphany could simply be an experience, or an occurrence in a particular moment of time that holds importance but not necessarily a revelation. The Joycean definition of an epiphany differs from the critical definition of an epiphany in that Joyce’s epiphany is more than what Joyce himself presents it to be: a simple manifestation, an evanescent moment, a significant experience. The characters in “Araby,” “The Boarding House,” and “Eveline” are aware of the action in their setting but never fully realize the implications of it; they are standing examples of Joycean characters who never reach the critical definition of an epiphany.

While I concur with Tindall’s statement that each of the stories in Dubliners “may be thought of as a great epiphany…an epiphany of epiphanies” (qtd. in Scholes 65), I refute his critical definition of the word “epiphany” as meaning a realization rather than an experience. For instance, the young boy in the story of “Araby” is left unsatisfied, hallowed, and questioning his movements because no light bulb of realization has popped up beside his head (Dubliners 29). He had promised a girl he fancied that he would go to Araby, a night market, and bring her back a souvenir (32). Arriving at the bazaar near closing time, the young boy lingers for a while at a stall and then leaves, not buying anything (35). At the end of the story, he sees himself as a “creature driven and derided by vanity,” his eyes “[burning] with anguish and anger” (35). The young boy does not come to any sort of realization; he simply goes through an experience of confusion, not knowing how to respond to his first love.

Though he gains awareness of the gap between himself and his schoolboy crush, he remains in the dark about how to respond to the girl he loves. Taking no control of his situation, he angrily leaves the market—lifeless (35). He does not realize what to do next or how to go about handling the lovesickness of his situation; as a matter of fact, the reader must go about ending the story of “Araby” for this young boy since Joyce provides no resolution for him, but only delivers a taste of his “evanescent…[moment]” (Stephen Hero 211), rather than yielding to Tindall’s definition of an epiphany, which would imply that the young boy arrived at a concrete turning point rather than simply a halfway point. In agreement with Scholes’ view, the role of the epiphany is to “function dramatically in an artistic context, revealing character, attitude, and emotion” (76).

The “epiphanies” that Joyce employs at the end of each story in Dubliners may leave the reader blank without a resolution in mind, but the very emptiness of a proper ending also injects readers with a greater understanding of the figures in the story as well as how they respond to their own experiences. Much like the reader, Polly in “The Boarding House” is uninformed about the happenings in her life (61). She does not realize that her mother is pushing for Mr. Doran to take her hand in marriage so as to save the family reputation Polly has stained by becoming involved with him, or that Mr. Doran is hesitant to wed Polly because he trusts that he could never truly grow to love her (66). At the end of the story, Polly does not come to any firm realization. “The Boarding House” ends with her as she is shedding tears of confusion, still wary about what the future might hold for her (69). Much like Polly, the reader is also unable to reach a conclusion.

However, by vicariously living through Polly’s Joycean epiphany, the reader can sympathize with her experience and better understand Polly as a character while at the same time struggling to remove the cliffhanger at the end of her story; for like many of Joyce’s characters, she arrives at no revelation. As with “Araby” and “The Boarding House,” “Eveline” does not conform to the critical definition of an epiphany as a realization, but rather to the Joycean definition of an epiphany as an experience instead. Eveline needs to make a choice: to either remain subjugated at home by staying with her abusive father or to sail away to Buenos Aires with her lover to live a life of freedom (36). Unlike the young boy in “Araby” and Polly in “The Boarding House” who respond to their experiences—whether by abruptly leaving the marketplace or crying for comfort—Eveline finds herself at an impasse, literally unable to move (41). Her lover, Frank, wills her to come by calling out to her three times, but instead “she set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal.

Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or of recognition” (41). Eveline encounters no sort of aha moment, no revelation. She is left confounded, lost without a revelation. The critical definition of an epiphany does not apply to Eveline; she simply stumbles upon a Joycean epiphany, or an experience, much like the characters in both “Araby” and “The Boarding House” that were also left in the unknown. A close reading of the stories in Dubliners reveals Joyce suggesting that in any individual’s life span, the chance of arriving at a realization is nil. Joyce presents the characters in his story in a pattern of age, starting from the youngest—“[The] Sisters” (9)—moving to the oldest, and ending with “The Dead” (175). Even as young children transform into adults, they have yet to find their purposes in life—unable to locate their ciphers. They only experience the Joycean epiphany, arriving at death before being able to indulge in the critical epiphany. Kevin J.H.

Dettmar, an English professor at Pomona College, states, “If we are honest, however, for many of us the story ends not in epiphany but in utter muddle” (80). Much like the readers who are left in confusion at the end of the story, the characters are more so left without answers, still questioning their identities. Joyce provides no ending for them, no resolution, and certainly no realization. As a matter of fact, the pattern of age that Joyce adopts while relating the stories of the characters in Dubliners points toward the notion that throughout one’s life, one may never even encounter any sort of realization. As opposed to critics who assert that Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories emphasizing revelations, I propose, in adopting the Joycean definition of an epiphany, that Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories lacking in revelations. Both the characters in Dubliners and Joyce’s readers arrive at no realizations at the end of any of the stories. Joyce wrote Dubliners between 1905 and 1914: a time when Irish nationalism was at its apex (Vore 3).

During this time, people were not only instilled with a desire to fight for Ireland’s independence, but they were also struggling to discover their identities and their purposes in life amidst the revolution (Vore 3). The young boy of “Araby,” Polly, and Eveline, posed in the backdrop of this fueling, nationalistic setting, ironically do not reach any revelations. Instead these characters are merely at a loss for their identities: the young boy unaware of how to respond to his first love, Polly not knowing if her future is with Mr. Doran or not, and Eveline having trouble letting go of her former identity as a domestic-bound woman. The experiences that these characters go through of still being left in the unknown during a time when Irish nationalism and identity-finding was at its apex mirrors the experience of the readers who are also still left in confusion with no resolution to cling on to. Critics—such as Levin, Connolly, and Tindall—assert that epiphanies are prevalent in James Joyce’s Dubliners; however, in actuality no character transforms into a dynamic one and proceeds towards change because no character, much like the reader, has reached any sort of revelation.

The young boy, Polly, and Eveline have only jumped into the pool of experience that is the Joycean epiphany, not yet having bathed in the “flash of intellectual light” (Walzi, 436), not yet having immersed themselves in realization. They are still left lost in the shallow end: the “evanescent . . . moment[s].” Works Cited “Analyzing a Story’s Plot: Freytag’s Pyramid.” Freytag’s Pyramid. Ohio University. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. < Bowen, Zack. “Joyce and the Epiphany Concept: A New Approach.” Journal of Modern Literature 9.1 (1981–1982): 103–114. Web. 8 Dec. 2012. < Dettmar, Kevin J. H. “The Dubliners Epiphany: (Mis)Reading the Book of Ourselves.” In The Illicit Joyce of Postmodernism: Reading Against the Grain. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Print. Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.

Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. Binghamton, NY: New Directions, 1944. Print. Scholes, Robert. “Joyce and the Epiphany: The Key to the Labyrinth?” Sewanee Review 72.1 (1964): 65–77. Web. 8 Dec. 2012. < Vore, Bob. “The Literature of James Joyce and Nick Joaquin: Reflections of National Identity in Ireland and the Philippines.” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 9.1 (1995): 1–32. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. < Walzi, Florence L. “The Liturgy of the Epiphany Season and the Epiphanies of Joyce.” PMLA 80.4 (1965): 436–450. Web. 5 Dec. 2012. < Book a Writing Consultation SparkNotes: Dubliners: Context SparkNotes Table of Contents Plot Overview James Joyce was born into a middle-class, Catholic family in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, on February 2, 1882.

The family’s prosperity dwindled soon after Joyce’s birth, forcing them to move from their comfortable home to the unfashionable and impoverished area of North Dublin. Nonetheless, Joyce attended a prestigious Jesuit school and went on to study philosophy and languages at University College, Dublin. He moved to Paris after graduation in 1902 to pursue medical school, but instead he turned his attention to writing. In 1903 he returned to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, the following year. From then on, Joyce made his home in other countries. From 1905 to 1915 he and Nora lived in Rome and Trieste, Italy, and from 1915 to 1919 they lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Between World War I and World War II, they lived in Paris. They returned to Zurich in 1940, where Joyce died in 1941. In 1907, at the age of twenty-five, Joyce published Chamber Music, a collection of poetry. Previously, he’d also written a short-story collection, Dubliners, which was published in 1914.

Though Joyce had written the book years earlier, the stories contained characters and events that were alarmingly similar to real people and places, raising concerns about libel. Joyce indeed based many of the characters in Dubliners on real people, and such suggestive details, coupled with the book’s historical and geographical precision and piercing examination of relationships, flustered anxious publishers. Joyce’s autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man followed Dubliners in 1916, and a play, Exiles, followed in 1918. Joyce is most famous for his later experimental novels, Ulysses (1922), which maps the Dublin wanderings of its protagonist in a single day, and Finnegans Wake (1939). These two works emblematize his signature stream-of-consciousness prose style, which mirrors characters’ thoughts without the limitations of traditional narrative, a style he didn’t use in Dubliners. Ireland permeates all of Joyce’s writing, especially Ireland during the tumultuous early twentieth century. The political scene at that time was uncertain but hopeful, as Ireland sought independence from Great Britain.

The nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, who became active in the 1870s, had reinvigorated Irish politics with his proposed Home Rule Bill, which aimed to give Ireland a greater voice in British government. Parnell, dubbed the “Uncrowned King of Ireland,” was hugely popular in Ireland, both for his anti-English views and his support of land ownership for farmers. In 1889, however, his political career collapsed when his adulterous affair with the married Kitty O’Shea was made public. Kitty’s husband had known for years about the affair, but instead of making it public, he attempted to use it to his political and financial advantage. He waited until he filed for divorce to expose the affair. Both Ireland and England were scandalized, Parnell refused to resign, and his career never recovered. Parnell died in 1891, when Joyce was nine years old. In the last part of the nineteenth century, after Parnell’s death, Ireland underwent a dramatic cultural revival. Irish citizens struggled to define what it meant to be Irish, and a movement began to reinvigorate Irish language and culture.

The movement celebrated Irish literature and encouraged people to learn the Irish language, which many people were forgoing in favor of the more modern English language. Ultimately, the cultural revival of the late nineteenth century gave the Irish a greater sense of pride in their identity. Despite the cultural revival, the bitter publicity surrounding Parnell’s affair, and later his death, dashed all hopes of Irish independence and unity. Ireland splintered into factions of Protestants and Catholics, Conservatives and Nationalists. Such social forces form a complex context for Joyce’s writing, which repeatedly taps into political and religious matters. Since Joyce spent little of his later life in Ireland, he did not witness such debates firsthand. However, despite living on the continent, Joyce retained his artistic interest in the city and country of his birth and ably articulated the Irish experience in his writings. Dubliners contains fifteen portraits of life in the Irish capital. Joyce focuses on children and adults who skirt the middle class, such as housemaids, office clerks, music teachers, students, shop girls, swindlers, and out-of-luck businessmen. Joyce envisioned his collection as a looking glass with which the Irish could observe and study themselves.

In most of the stories, Joyce uses a detached but highly perceptive narrative voice that displays these lives to the reader in precise detail. Rather than present intricate dramas with complex plots, these stories sketch daily situations in which not much seems to happen—a boy visits a bazaar, a woman buys sweets for holiday festivities, a man reunites with an old friend over a few drinks. Though these events may not appear profound, the characters’ intensely personal and often tragic revelations certainly are. The stories in Dubliners peer into the homes, hearts, and minds of people whose lives connect and intermingle through the shared space and spirit of Dublin. A character from one story will mention the name of a character in another story, and stories often have settings that appear in other stories. Such subtle connections create a sense of shared experience and evoke a map of Dublin life that Joyce would return to again and again in his later works. More Help Dubliners | Novelguide Novelguide Total Votes: 303 Introduction This is a study guide for the book Dubliners written by James Joyce. Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914.

They were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. Please click on the literary analysis category you wish to be displayed. Back and Next buttons can guide you through all the sections or you can choose to jump from section to section using the links below or the links at the left. Author: James Joyce Dubliners Dubliners or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell Think of Dubliners as a pre-Internet version of Google Maps for Dublin, Ireland . For most of the last hundred years, if you wanted an interactive geographic experience of Dublin—the sights, the sounds, and especially the people—you couldn't do much better than read the fifteen linked short stories of James Joyce collection. Most editions of the collection include a couple of city maps in the opening pages, but it becomes pretty clear early on that the stories themselves create an even better map of the Irish capital because they dig deep into the thoughts of its citizens in order to draw a psychological map of a place and a time. Not even Google Maps can do that, though we're pretty sure they're working on it as we speak.

Chances are good that one of the reasons you're reading Dubliners is because the most famous Irish writer of the 20th-century, one of the most important writers associated with the movement of Modernism , James Aloysius Joyce , wrote it. Chances are also good that you're reading Dubliners because everything else that Joyce wrote after these stories tops out at more than 800 pages of sheer brilliance. You're going to want to read his two big novels, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake , but you'd be in school through July if you read them in class. No, thanks. So you've opted for Dubliners instead, as an easily digestible alternative. And you've chosen well, we might add. Even the story of the book itself is fascinating. When Joyce wrote it, publishers practically fled his presence, they were so scared. They thought the book was a little too edgy and that the strict British government would sue them for printing obscene material. After going to all the trouble of accepting the stories and typing them up, one publisher even burned the proofs of the work, after what can only be described as a change of heart.

Then, once Dubliners finally did show up in stores, it was no Twilight . No long lines of screaming kids in costumes waiting to read the sequel or see the movie. No big cash payouts to its newly famous author. Joyce didn't make a lot of money from the ten-year saga, and high school students definitely weren't reading the stuff for at least another sixty years. Bottom line? It was way ahead of its time, way too realistic, and way to frustrating for readers who wanted a really clear plot with a twist ending. Joyce had something different in mind. Dubliners' portrait of the city as an early 20th-century metropolis isn't quite the advertisement you'll find in those terrible travel magazines that always seem to be in doctor's offices. The characters of these stories aren't the smiling redheads with adorable accents you might expect when you think of the luck of the Irish. In this Dublin, almost everyone's unlucky: they are beaten, berated, betrayed, and deserted by their loved ones; they drink away their salaries and their good sense; in some cases, they simply die; and as if this weren't enough, they even lose vast sums in poker.

If Lonely Planet guides give you up-to-the-minute updates on Dublin for the fanny-pack-and-camera crowd, Dubliners is the Not For Tourists black book in an edition that hasn't needed revising since it first came out in 1914. If this is starting to sound bleak, we're not going to lie: there's not a single happy ending to be found among the fifteen stories. But that's exactly why these stories are so good. They portray moments of extreme personal crisis and intense personal reflection with such realistic power that we can't help but see ourselves in these Dubliners, as scary as that sounds. We've all been disappointed, wounded, cheated, startled, rejected, and scorned, which means that it's hard not to think Joyce's writing is timeless, that it says something to us about the places of our minds and hearts that are as damp and cold and uninviting as his Dublin. The German writer Franz Kafka wrote that fiction should be "an axe for the frozen sea within us," and Dubliners depicts the frozen sea so clearly we can't help but grab for whatever axes are within reach. Shall we start hacking away? Why Should I Care?

Buckle up, because Shmoop's about to make a very big, very bold guarantee: at one point in your life, you're going to find yourself somewhere new. A new school, a new town, hey, maybe even a new country. And someone who's been there before is going to tell you that the best way to get your feet under you is to get off your rear and get out on the streets. Get to know the people and their stories, and you'll get to know the city. You might feel like it's too much pressure and you're nervous until you see a few things that are the same everywhere: our living conditions affect who we are and how we behave, and the characters that surround us mold us strangely and (sometimes) beautifully. Some of the characters in the stories in Dubliners are more like us than others, but that's not the point. The point is that even the really different and really odd folks have become what they are because of where they live. That's true for us, too. Reading Dubliners, you'll take a tour of a city in the eyes of its citizens.

The geography of the city, the morality, the history, the traditions, the slang, the dress code—they make people who they are in the same way that our schools, friends, backgrounds, and interests change us and mold us in subtle ways. So what does that mean for us, then? Does it mean we're stuck, that we're simply byproducts of the neighborhood, or does it offer a way for us to change and escape? Well, that's for you to decide, but we think these stories have a few answers to offer. Dubliners Literature Guide - TeacherVision BEFORE READING Because so much of the book consists of "snapshots" of Dublin life in Joyce's time (1882-1941), it is important to help students understand its historical context. To make reading more fruitful, have students use the "Introduction" and "Bibliography" in the Signet Classic edition as a starting point for completing these assignments: Divide students into groups and assign each group one of the following topics to present orally to the class: • Research Dublin's size, economic structure, and place in Europe. How did/does Dublin compare to other European capitals? What is the basis for the differences?

How have these differences affected the Irish people? • Research the politics of Joyce's Ireland and compare and contrast them to our political system today. Compare and contrast the colonial America's relations with Great Britain to Ireland's relationship with England. How is Ireland's current political state similar to that described in Dubliners? How is Ireland's current relationship with England related to the political climate of Joyce's Dublin? • Research the role religion played in life in Joyce's Dublin. What effects has Catholicism had on the Irish today and in Joyce's time? • Research Joyce's life and explain how growing up in Dublin affected him. Also, explain why he felt he had to leave Ireland to become a successful artist. • Research the life and death of Charles Stewart Parnell. What were the planks in his political platform? How did he plan to accomplish his plans for Ireland? What effect did his political fall and ensuing death have on Irish politics? Joyce's Chronology in Historical Context (Garrett, Peter K., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Dubliners: A Collection of Critical Essays.

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968.) In order by "Year", "Joyce", "The Age" 1882 - Joyce born, February 2. Phoenix Park murders in Dublin. 1898-1902 - Joyce attends University College, Dublin. The Boer War; death of Queen Victoria. Irish Literary Theatre founded. Published: W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds; Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams. 1904 - Joyce begins Dubliners, leaves Ireland with Nora Barnacle. Published: Conrad, Nostromo; James, The Golden Bowl. 1907 - Chamber Music published (poems written from 1902 onwards). J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World performed. 1914 - Serial publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins in February; Dubliners published in June. Joyce begins Ulysses. World War I begins. 1916 - Portrait published in book form. Easter rising in Ireland. 1922 - Ulysses published. T. S.

Eliot's The Waste Land published. 1927-29 - Joyce publishes early versions of Finnegan's Wake as Work in Progress. Published: Yeats, The Tower and The Winding Stair. New York stock market crash ushers in depression. 1939 - Finnegan's Wake published. World War II begins with German invasion of Poland. Yeats and Freud die. 1941 - Joyce dies, January 13. Germany invades Russia; Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; USA enters war. Structure and style of the novel Dubliners is not merely a group of short stories structured according to stages of human development. Joyce meant Dubliners to be read as a novel of a city's development, with its inhabitants growing from innocence to experience. In a letter to a prospective editor, Joyce wrote: My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country, and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order.

I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard. (from Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, New York, 1940, V-iv.) Joyce's role as recorder of the city develops the style in which Dubliners is written. He adopts an attitude of "scrupulous meanness" toward his characters, in which Joyce balances sympathy and objectivity. This balance exhibits both factual information and sympathetic understanding of characters. Evidence of this style lies in Joyce's tongue-in-cheek objectivity, subtle comment, careful crafting of tone and images, and demonstration of conflict in characters' intentions and actions. To help students develop understanding and appreciation of Joyce's structure and style, have them complete these assignments: • To immerse students in Joyce's stylistic theory, have students develop "scrupulously mean" character portraits of people from their own lives. Students should take extreme care in selecting people for their character portraits in order to maintain the balance between realistic objectivity and sympathetic understanding. Even more challenging would be a character portrait of themselves.

• As an extension of the previous activity, have students draw or paint a portrait that accomplishes the same objective as their written piece. • Students may create a dramatic monologue which develops a realistic character using the concept of "scrupulous meanness." In preparing this monologue, students should consider elements such as costume, voice quality, and physical presence which will contribute to character development as well as to the presentation's dramatic quality. To examine Joyce's writing choices more thoroughly, students can compare their "scrupulous meanness" in any of these projects to Joyce's style during their reading of Dubliners. Epiphany in Joyce's Dubliners Joyce often ironically exposes his characters to moments of self-awareness or awareness of the true nature of their environment. Joyce called these moments "epiphanies," adapting the religious term referring to the revelation of the infant Jesus to the Magi. In Stephen Hero Joyce writes, "by an epiphany he (Stephen Daedalus) meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself" (188).

It is the flash in which the essential nature of a person, an object, or a moment is perceived, all at once. Joyce says, "its soul, its whatness leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance." Joyce often recorded his own epiphanies, then later used the idea of epiphany in Dubliners as a symbolic literary technique to reveal the paralysis of the city as well as the faults and shortcomings of its inhabitants. Joyce also used the epiphany as a structural device; rather than employing a traditional resolution, Joyce ends his stories with the epiphany in the form of a speech (as in "The Sisters" and "Grace"), a gesture ("Two Gallants"), or a "memorable phase of the mind itself" ("Araby" and "The Dead"), because the reader's revelation about the character's condition satisfies Joyce's purpose in writing the story. To make the concept of epiphany easier for students, have them select from these projects: • Gather a collection of at least five popular songs whose lyrics deal with realizations of the artist or a character the artist has created, and play the songs for the class.

Make sure to highlight the moments of realization in your presentation and show similarities and differences between the way the narrator of each song handles his/her "epiphany." • Complete an artistic rendering (in sculpture, drawing, painting, or fabric arts, such as batik) of a moment that you realized something important about yourself, your life, or those around you. • Demonstrate (or build) a machine in which a certain part or motion of a part changes the motion or adds a new dimension to the original motion of a part. Be sure to explain how the "epiphanic" part changes the purpose of the basic machine. Section I: Childhood Synopses "The Sisters" (1-11) A young boy must deal with the death of Father Flynn, his mentor, exposing him to others' opinions of the priest. These force him to examine their relationship and cause him to see himself as an individual for the first time.

"An Encounter" (12-22) Faced with boredom at school and spurred by excitement found in pulp magazine stories about the American Wild West, two young boys skip school to take a trip to "The Pigeon-house." Their schoolboy lark and youthful egocentricism are destroyed by an encounter with an aging pervert. "Araby" (23-30) A young boy experiences first love, a crush on a friend's older sister. Because she is unable to go to the "splendid bazaar [Araby]," he promises to buy her a gift. This promise becomes the basis of a romantic quest. When he finally arrives at Araby, his romantic illusions are shattered as he becomes aware of the pain and unfulfilled dreams of the adult world. Connecting the Stories to Students' Lives A central theme in Section I is children's sudden awareness that the adult world is not the place childhood dreams have made it. To help students explore this theme and connect it to their own lives, have them consider the following questions in journal writing or oral discussion: • How is high school different from what you thought it would be when you were in middle school?

• How did you react the first time you discovered that someone you admired and looked up to had "feet of clay"? How did this realization affect your view of the world? • Did you ever had a crush on someone older? What did you do in order to see them or be near them? At what point did you realize that your dream person was unobtainable? How did you react to this knowledge? Section II Synopses "Eveline" (31-36) Eveline chooses the familiarity of a life in which she is mistreated by her abusive father and takes the place of her dead mother in raising her younger siblings over the fear of change represented by starting a new life in a new country with the man who loves her. "After the Race" (36-44) A young gentleman (Jimmy) learns that he doesn't have what it takes to succeed in his circle of sophisticated and glamorous international friends. "Two Gallants" (45-57) A not-so-young man (Lenehan) examines the shallowness and hopelessness of his life while killing time waiting for his gigolo friend Corley to bilk money from a poor working girl.

"The Boarding House" (58-66) The owner of a boarding house (Mrs. Mooney) wordlessly conspires with her daughter (Polly) to force Mr. Doran (Polly's lover and a boarder in the house) to marry Polly. Connecting the Stories to Students' Lives A central theme in Section II is paralysis. Characters are trapped in lives they abhor by events and forces they could control as well as those beyond their control. In these stories adolescents and young adults become aware they are or will be trapped, creating in them moral or spiritual paralysis that prevents them from escaping or avoiding the trap. To connect these stories to their lives, have students: • List future goals and outline steps to achieve these goals; list outside support needed. Write about self-created obstacles as well as those created by outside forces. • Interview a successful person. Develop interview questions in advance to discover how the individual achieved goal(s) and explore obstacles (internal and external) that had to be overcome. • Write about leaving a familiar place for a new place (e.g., moved, changed schools). Discuss the power of familiarity and the frightening aspects of change.

• Respond to the following: Have you or someone you know tried to join a group that was too old? Has anyone tried to join your group who was too young or not as sophisticated as the group? What were the results of these efforts? Section III Synopses "A Little Cloud" (67-83) Little Chandler goes to a fancy bar to meet his old friend Gallaher whom he hasn't seen in eight years. In those years Gallaher has become a successful writer for a newspaper in London and Little Chandler has settled into a mediocre job, marriage, and fatherhood. His reunion with Gallaher forces him to compare their two lives, and this comparison makes him see himself as hopelessly trapped in a dull, depressing existence. "Counterparts" (84-97) Farrington is a lazy, incompetent copier and an abusive husband and father. He tries to escape the depression, rage, and hopelessness caused by the mess he has made of his job and homelife through liquid lunches and drunken evenings out with the boys. "Clay" (98-106) Maria works in the kitchen of an industrial laundry.

Because of her gentle nature and peace-making skills, she is liked by everyone at the laundry. The high points of Maria's life are her visits to Joe and his family. She was Joe's nanny, and his family is her only family. The story centers around her visit on Hallow's Eve and illustrates the emptiness in her life. "A Painful Case" (107-118) Mr. James Duffy was a man who "abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder." This abhorrence extended to any show of emotion or romantic love. He ended his only human relationship when he realized that Mrs. Sinico was in love with him and not just their intellectual discussions. Two years later he read a news article about Mrs. Sinico's alcohol-related, accidental death. From the newspaper's interview with her husband and daughter, he realized the break up had destroyed her life. This realization leads to the epiphany that he had missed out on his chance to love and be loved. Connecting the Stories to Students' Lives In Section III the theme of paralysis explores the world of mature adults who are aware of the trap(s) into which they have fallen and the spiritual and personal paralysis that led them there and keeps them there.

Have students explore this theme's connection to their world by engaging in some of the following activities. • Complete one of the following: - It's unfair that __________ is more popular than me because . . . - It's unfair that __________ made a better grade than me because . . . - It's unfair that __________ gets more recognition than me because . . . Examine this written response to determine how much of the unfairness is due to things you have or haven't done and how much is due to forces beyond your control. • Write about a recent argument or disagreement with a friend, parent, teacher, or other adult. Now write about it from the other person's point of view and then from the point of view of an objective observer. • Brainstorm a list of individuals who have dedicated their lives to the service of others. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of living such a life. • Respond to the following statement: "Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse." (112-113) In writing describe the type of individual who would espouse such a philosophy.

Section IV Synopses "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" (119-138) This story takes place in a political committee room where several political canvassers have gathered at the end of a long, wet day of vote getting. They warm themselves by the small coal fire and bottles of stout. As the evening progresses, they discuss politics, each other, and the death of the great nationalist politician, Parnell. "A Mother" (139-154) This story is a war of wills between Mrs. Kearney and Mr. Holohan and the committee members of the "Eire Abu Society." The conflict revolves around the payment of eight guineas to her daughter Kathleen for her services as an accompanist for a concert the society is planning. Mrs. Kearney throws herself into the promotion and organization of the concert. When the concert's success is in doubt, Mrs. Kearney insists that Kathleen be paid before she performs, delaying the start of the concert. The battle of wills ends when Mrs. Kearney refuses to let Kathleen play for the second half of the concert because she has only been paid half of her fee.

"Grace" (155-182) Concerned over his drunken and dangerous behavior, Mr. Kernan's friends conspire to reform him by taking him to a men's weekend-long religious retreat. After all their cajoling and his wife's urging, he agrees to go. The men he sees at the retreat and the priest's businesslike message provide an ironic ending that illustrates the moral paralysis of Joyce's Dublin. "The Dead" (183-236) The last and most significant of the stories takes place at the annual holiday dance held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their niece Mary Jane. The story focuses on the perceptions of Gabriel Conroy, Kate and Julia's nephew. Over the course of the evening, Gabriel has jarring encounters with the party guests, his aunts, and his wife Gretta, forcing him to view the world from a point of view other than his own egocentrism. This story crystallizes Joyce's intent for the entire novel. It was written after the book was contracted for publishing, as an afterthought.

Gabriel's epiphany illustrates Joyce's "scrupulous meanness;" Gabriel realizes that an objective viewpoint leads to true sympathy, created by the bond of human mortality. This final story is masterful in its structure; the pacing of events and the use of symbolic detail (such as the snow) draw the reader in like a vortex, growing narrower and faster towards its universal close. Connecting the Stories to Students' Lives Section IV explores the paralysis of an entire community by examining the ways that individuals are held down by the failure of political, religious, and social systems. Have students consider the following as mini research projects, journal entries, or discussion starters: • Contact the office of one of your state or national representatives or senators and find out what paid and volunteer positions they employ for their campaigns; and/or research the major campaign figures of each party in the last presidential campaign. • Discuss instances in which parents you know have unintentionally hurt their children by interfering in attempts to protect them; and/or check magazines and newspapers for articles about overprotective, interfering parents of child and adolescent sports and entertainment celebrities. • Tell about the first time you looked at your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or other adults as individuals.

Extend this discussion to looking at your best friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend as the center of his/her own world instead of as an important part of your world. • Tell about a time you made a uninformed judgement about someone close to you. When you discovered the "rest of the story," how did you react? How did the new information change your perceptions about that person? About yourself? Prev Themes in Dubliners Themes in Dubliners Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List Even before its London publication in 1914, James Joyce's Dubliners caused considerable controversy due to the material in the stories that was obvious and accessible, available to even the most casual readers and reviewers. The collection all but overflows with unattractive human behavior: simony, truancy, pederasty, drunkenness (all of them in the first three stories alone!), child and spousal abuse, gambling, prostitution, petty thievery, blackmail, and suicide. The use throughout of the names of Dublin streets and parks — and especially shops, pubs, and railway companies — was seen as scandalous, too.

(In the past, fiction writers had almost invariably changed the names of their short-story and novel settings, or discretely left them out altogether.) In fact, including these details delayed publication of the book by years, as potential publishers and printers feared lawsuits by those businesses mentioned by name. Disrespectful dialogue about the king of England, and even the use of the mild British oath "bloody," were thought by many to go beyond the bounds of good taste — and they did. In contrast to his status-conscious character Gabriel Conroy, James Joyce rejected good taste — one of the characteristics that mark his art as Modern. A precedent existed for Joyce's warts-and-all approach, in the nineteenth-century French school of writing known as Naturalism, but no writer had ever been quite as explicit, or as relentlessly downbeat, as Joyce in Dubliners. To this day, despite a more liberal attitude in art and entertainment regarding the issues dramatized in the book (premarital sex, for instance, is hardly the taboo it was when "The Boarding House" appeared), many first-time readers are distracted by the unsavory surface details of nearly all the stories. This distraction can prevent them from appreciating Dubliners' deeper, more universal themes.

It can be difficult to see the forest in this book for the blighted, stunted, gnarled trees. Of course, the forest is no fairyland, either. For Joyce's three major themes in Dubliners are paralysis, corruption, and death. All appear in the collection's very first story, "The Sisters" — and all continue to appear throughout the book, up to and including the magnificent final tale, "The Dead." James Joyce himself wrote, "I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that . . . paralysis which many consider a city." Joyce believed passionately that Irish society and culture had been frozen in place for centuries by two forces: the Roman Catholic Church and England. The result, at the turn of the twentieth century, was one of the poorest, least-developed countries in all of Western Europe. And so images of paralysis recur throughout the collection obsessively, relentlessly, and without mercy. In the first line of "Sisters," and thus the first of Dubliners as a whole, it is revealed that Father Flynn has suffered a third and fatal stroke. Later, the unnamed protagonist of the story dreams of a gray face that "had died of paralysis," which is that of Father Flynn himself.

This sets the tone for much of the material to follow. The main character of "An Encounter" wants "real adventures," but is waylaid on his quest for the Pigeon House by a stranger who masturbates — a kind of paralysis because it is sex that does not result in procreation or even love. The Pigeon House itself is symbolic: A pigeon is a bird trained always to return home, no matter how far it flies. In "Araby," although the boy ultimately reaches the bazaar, he arrives too late to buy Mangan's sister a decent gift there. Why? Because his uncle, who holds the money that will make the excursion possible, has been out drinking. Drunkenness paralyzes too, of course. Eveline, in the story that bears her name, freezes at the gangplank leading to the ship that would take her away from her dead-end Dublin life. All three characters venture tentatively outward, only to be forced by fear or circumstance — by Ireland itself, Joyce would say — to return where they came from, literally or metaphorically empty handed.

Indeed, characters in Dubliners are forever returning home, bereft: Think of the protagonists of "A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," and "Clay." The bereft Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead" never makes it home at all. Yellow and brown are the colors symbolic of paralysis throughout the work of James Joyce. Note, for instance, that the old men in Dubliners' first two stories show yellow teeth when they smile. Joyce's other image of paralysis is the circle. The race cars in "After the Race" conjure images of circular or oval tracks on which starting and finish lines are one and the same, and indeed, the story's protagonist seems stuck in a pointless circuit of expensive schools and false friendships. In "Two Gallants" and "The Dead," characters travel around and around, never moving truly forward, never actually arriving anywhere. Lenehan in "Two Gallants" travels in a large and meaningless loop around Dublin, stopping only for a paltry meal and ending near to where he began. He is an observer, not an actor — and an observer of a petty crime, at that.

In one of the most memorable images in the entire book, Gabriel's grandfather in "The Dead" is said to have owned a horse named Johnny who earned his keep at the family glue factory "walking round and round in order to drive the mill." One day, according to family legend, the "old gentleman" harnessed Johnny to a carriage and led him out into the city. Upon reaching a famous statue of King William, however, the horse could not be made to proceed onward, instead plodding dumbly in an endless circle around the statue. Gabriel acts this out, circling the front hall of the Morkans' house in his galoshes, to the delight of all. Conventionally, the circle is a symbol of life with positive connotations, as in wedding rings and Christmas wreaths. In Dubliners, however, it means an insuperable lack of progress, growth, and development. It means paralysis. Joyce's second great theme here is corruption; that is, contamination, deterioration, perversity, or depravity. Because corruption prevents progress, it is closely related to the theme of paralysis — and indeed, corruption is almost as prevalent in Dubliners as paralysis. Again, Joyce introduces his theme at once.

In the second paragraph of "The Sisters," the unnamed narrator mentions simony (the selling to its members by the Roman Catholic Church of blessings, pardons, or other favors), of which Father Flynn has apparently been guilty. The two stories that follow reiterate the theme. Certainly, perversity and depravity exist in "An Encounter," just as the narrator's unarguably pure love for Mangan's sister in "Araby" is contaminated — and effectively paralyzed — by his uncle's drunkenness. In fact, a subtheme of Dubliners' first three stories, as well as "A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," and "A Mother" is the corruption of childhood innocence — seen in the former stories from the child's point of view, and in the latter from the perspective of the corrupting adults. Corruption returns in various guises throughout the book. In "The Boarding House," Mrs. Mooney hopes to earn money from the young woman living under her roof, and thus gives Polly "the run of the young men" there.

In "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," the canvassers work for money, rather than out of enthusiasm on behalf of the candidate they support, and some of them in fact seem contemptuous of that candidate. "A Mother" returns to the theme of corruption, as the concerts staged by Holohan are patriotic in nature (a celebration of Irish culture), and yet Mrs. Kearney's only concern is the money promised to her daughter. Finally, in "Grace," the purity of Christian faith in God clearly has been corrupted by the institution of the Catholic Church — then further corrupted by types like Kernan's friends, who seem to mean well but misunderstand almost everything about their own faith. By discouraging him from drinking, Kernan's friends have probably saved his life, but they have done so by means of a sort of parody of real religion. Joyce's third and last major theme in Dubliners is death. He links this theme closely to the prior two, and without much effort, as paralysis often precedes death, and corruption could be defined as resulting from a kind of spiritual or moral death.

Once more, Joyce introduces his theme from the get-go: The events of "The Sisters" are caused by the death of Father Flynn, whose corpse the story's boy protagonist eventually sees face to face. Deaths are also implied in this story, and in "Araby" — those of the boys' parents, absent from both tales. Thereafter, death follows death in Dubliners: Dead is the priest who last lived in the house in "Araby"; Eveline's mother in "Eveline"; Mrs. Mooney's father in "The Boarding House"; Maria, perhaps, in "Clay" (the title of which symbolizes death itself); Mrs. Sinico (by suicide) in "A Painful Case"; Charles Parnell in "Ivy Day"; and finally Michael Furey and the other inhabitants of the churchyard in which he lays buried in "The Dead." Those are only the actual deaths in the book; add spiritual and moral deaths, and Dubliners grows as crowded with corpses as the Hades episode in Homer's Odyssey. Paralysis, corruption, and death: In Dubliners, Joyce paints a grim picture of his hometown and its inhabitants.

Keep in mind that he blamed the sorry state of affairs on outside forces — England and the church — rather than the Irish themselves. Looking back, the writer himself found the book insufficiently sympathetic to Dubliners' best qualities (hospitality, for example). He would address this deficiency in his masterpiece, Ulysses, which itself began as an aborted Dubliners story. Before that, however, he would tell the tale of a Dublin youth who vows to escape the paralysis, corruption, and death endemic to Dublin, a character based on Joyce himself whom he called Stephen Dedalus. Dedalus would be the main character of Joyce's thematically similar next book and his first novel: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. James Joyce - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. James Joyce Biography of James Joyce James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex network of symbolic parallels drawn from the mythology, history, and literature, and created a unique language of invented words, puns, and allusions. James Joyce was born in Dublin, on February 2, 1882, as the son of John Stanislaus Joyce, an impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of professions, including politics and tax collecting. Joyce's mother, Mary Jane Murray, was ten years younger than her husband. She was an accomplished pianist, whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In spite of their poverty, the family struggled to maintain a solid middle-class facade. From the age of six Joyce, was educated by Jesuits at Clongowes Wood College, at Clane, and then at Belvedere College in Dublin (1893-97). In 1898 he entered the University College, Dublin. Joyce's first publication was an essay on Ibsen's play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900.

At this time he also began writing lyric poems. After graduation in 1902 the twenty-year-old Joyce went to Paris, where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. He spent a year in France, returning when a telegram arrived saying his mother was dying. Not long after her death, Joyce was traveling again. He left Dublin in 1904 with Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid who he married in 1931. Joyce published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, a play Exilesin 1918 and Ulysses in 1922. In 1907 Joyce had published a collection of poems, Chamber Music. At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved with his family to Zï¿½rich. In Zï¿½rich Joyce started to develop the early chapters of Ulysses, which was first published in France because of censorship troubles in the Great Britain and the United States, where the book became legally available only in 1933.

In March 1923 Joyce started in Paris his second major work, Finnegans Wake, suffering at the same time chronic eye troubles caused by glaucoma. The first segment of the novel appeared in Ford Madox Ford's transatlantic review in April 1924, as part of what Joyce called Work in Progress. The final version was published in 1939. Some critics considered the work a masterpiece, though many readers found it incomprehensible. After the fall of France in WWII, Joyce returned to Zï¿½rich, where he died on January 13, 1941, still disappointed with the reception of Finnegans Wake. The above biography is copyrighted. Do not republish it without permission. Forum Discussions on James Joyce Recent Forum Posts on James Joyce Great Nationalist Meeting at Borris in Ossory ( Ulysses ) Joyce is not refering to Daniel O'Connell as some people suggest, he is in fact refering to Michael Davitt the Irish Land League leader and MP who turned against Parnell when his affair with Kitty O Shea was revealed .

Michael Davitt held 5 Great Meeting at Knockaroo Hill , Borris in Ossory, the last of the 5 took place in 1904 . The most commonly used headline when these meetings were being reported in local and national papers was " Great Nationalist Meeting at Borris in Ossory "... Posted By jjjj2 in Joyce, James || 2 Replies Ulysses=Day : Finnegan's Wake=Night. Must one start with day? Hello. I find Finnegans Wake much more to my liking then Ulysses personally. However, I once read that JJ stated that he expected his readers to pretty much dedicate their lives to his works as if they were religious canon...which they kind of are. Finnegans Wake IS MY BIBLE, or I have been reading it as such anyway. In any case since Ulysses is considered Day, is it absolutely necessary to start with Ulysses? Or is it just fine to read only one work of JJ...for me that is Finnegans Wake? It's well known that Finnegans Wake is connected to Ulysses and all of his other works.

That they are all connected in fact, that one must read all of his works in order to understand what is truly going ... Posted By Nebnos in Joyce, James || 7 Replies Radio broadcast on Joyce by Terence White Gervais? Hello. First post here - hoping someone may be able to help? Two part query: In Ellmann's biography of Joyce (page 715), Terence White Gervais (aka Terence White), an English poet, writer, musician and composer (and most definitely a Joycean), is mentioned as visiting Joyce in 1938, and asking him about the musicality of Finnegans Wake. I'm researching White Gervais - not as an academic, just for personal interest. He died in 1968, and an obituary mentions that he "broadcast a vivid account" of his meetings with Joyce - no further details. Radio, presumably. I can't track down any record of such a broadcast. But (1) someone else may know? On the other hand (2), I'm wondering if his rem...

Posted By richard warren in Joyce, James || 1 Reply James Joyce: A Personal Retrospective JAMES JOYCE: some personal reflections A new biography of the famous Irish novelist James Joyce(1882-1941) was in bookstores this summer, 2012, or winter if you lived in the southern hemisphere as I do. It’s more than 600 pages and it’s by the British biographer Gordon Bowker--James Joyce: A New Biography.(1) This is not the Gordon Bowker who is the American entrepreneur and co-founder of Starbucks. Bowker’s book is a very useful and readable updating of Richard Ellmann’s classic life—a biography so magisterial, I am informed, that no one has really attempted to compete with it since its first edition in 1959 and its revised edition in 1982. Af... Posted By Ron Price in Joyce, James || 0 Replies Do u wanna read with me?

Hi, I am gonna start to read Dubliners by James Joyce, and i am so excited :) It would be amazing to read it chapter by chapter with someone and comment it here or, on skype,or on facebook or everywhere you want to. So is there someone that is reading it right now or is he gonna read it? Greetings from Italy :nopity:... Posted By Heidy in Joyce, James || 0 Replies Emotion in Joyce I'm a huge Joyce lover, but after reading a lot of critical work/exploration on him, I wonder if I'm missing the pieces that discuss the emotion in his work. Specifically Ulysses. I would love any recs! My favorite part of Joyce's work is the emotion in Ulysses, ie. when Stephen and Bloom connect at the end, when Bloom 'sees' Rudy, when Molly recalls Bloom's proposal, etc. I am always deeply moved by these types of scenes, but I haven't seen/read any critical commentary on the 'emotive power' of Joyce. Maybe this sounds too nebulous! I wonder if anyone else felt this way.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading critical pieces on Joyce and have a lot of books on him -- it's just that emot... Posted By joycelover in Joyce, James || 2 Replies James Joyce Summer School Has anyone here attended the JJ Summer Schools in either Dublin or Trieste? I'm planning to go to the Dub one in July 2013 (they aren't holding it this summer b/c of the International JJ Symposium, which is taking place there). I'd be interested to hear about what it's like! It sounds amazing and I've wanted to attend since they first started them (late 80s??). I'm so excited that I finally can! :banana: (WHY is that not a dancing potato??? WHY!????) Any and all info welcome!... Posted By joycenut in Joyce, James || 1 Reply Help with a portrait of the artist essay Hi everyone, I'm doing an essay for grade 12 english. I have to compare the life of stephen daedelus to Bertrand Russel's view of "the good life".

I have chosen to say that Stephen does not live a good life because for most of the story, his life lacks love, knowledge, and benevolence. Can anyone give me quotes that would directly tell those 3 subtopics? I was marked poorly because my chosen quotes would've answered the subtopics, but with explaining, i need quotes that the reader will know "he lacks love, knowledge, or benevolence" just from reading the quote, thank you :)... Posted By guitargoalie in Joyce, James || 0 Replies Araby by James Joyce I have recently read Araby by James Joyce and I found this story rather convolutedly written and it is hard to arrive at the exact theme Joyce had in mind. It seems this story is about putting forth his ideas about the pointlessness of love and religion, a kind of epiphany at the end of the story he had when the narrator encounters a lady promiscuously talking with two young men ignoring him at the bazaar. This is one of the few stories I have read recently and I like the plotless flow of the novel. I just want to put it for discussion since this is one of his best stories, artistically superb and indeed needing much illumination....

Posted By osho in Joyce, James || 10 Replies Silence, exile and cunning: James Joyce, a biography? Hello, I wonder if somebody can recommend a biography of James Joyce. Not long ago I remembered Joyceï¿½s often quoted sentence about ï¿½silence, exile and cunningï¿½; Iï¿½d like to read a book that explores the relationship between Joyceï¿½s upbringing in Ireland and his reaction against it, both through his actions (ï¿½expatriation" is the obvious answer) and through his art. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. Oudis (The quotation -from ï¿½A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manï¿½- is: ï¿½ï¿½You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my father... Posted By Oudis in Joyce, James || 1 Reply Joyce, Portrait of the Artist....Stream of Consciousness or Free Indirect Discourse?

I was looking to get some insight into differences between Free Indirect Discourse and Stream of Consciousness. Every source I look to seems to have a different opinion on the matter. Apparently some believe the terms are almost interchangeable (or that some text selections are both). Others note that Stream of Consciousness explicitly implies first-person narration, while FID is marked by third. What would one consider the works of James Joyce. He is said to invoke both. Consider this passage for instance: Yes, his mother was hostile to the idea, as he had read from her listless silence. Yet her mistrust pricked him more keenly than his father's pride and he thou... Posted By lelea in Joyce, James || 0 Replies I need some help with James Joyce's 'Eveline' Knowing that Joyce is a very fine author and a master wordsmith I feel like the meaning of some of his imagery escapes me, so I am wondering if you all can help me out? Twice the story mentions Eveline leaning her head against the window curtains "inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne".

I have the vague idea that this is a reference to her seemingly never-ending 'housewifely duties', that although she dusts the house every week, there is always a fresh coat of dirt for her to clean. Given that Joyce writes this line twice it seems important to me and I want to make sure I've got it right. The second thing I'm not sure about is the end when Eveline is contemplating whether she should ... Posted By Thrasymachus in Joyce, James || 3 Replies Review: Dubliners by James Joyce | lisasliterarylife Review: Dubliners by James Joyce ≈ Leave a comment Tags book review , classic literature , Dubliners by James Joyce , gnomon , Irish Literature , Modernism , paralysis , Short Stories , The Dead , The Sisters During his construction of Ulysses , James Joyce was asked to submit a short story to a Dublin newspaper. Joyce wrote, ‘I am writing a series of epiclets-ten-for a paper. I have written one.

I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.’ Dubliners is a compilation of fifteen short stories about the lives of the Irish and the struggles they face due to a history of cultural ‘paralysis.’ Each story can be read as its own separate entity, but when read together; they create a larger whole or gnomon . Dubliners is arranged with much thought and eloquence as a collection. The first story, “The Sisters,” sets up the rest of the book perfectly. In this story, a Catholic priest, Father Flynn has just died. The young boy and narrator had been the priest’s companion. The boy reflects upon the death of the old man and the things the man had taught him in their time together. Flynn had an obsession with the words paralysis, gnomon (story within a story), and simony which play out in the rest of the text. Joyce chooses the juxtaposition of a friendship between a boy at the onset of life and a man at the brink of death in order to exhibit the importance that the wisdom of age may bestow upon a person.

The young boy is receiving his first real lesson; appreciate the things you have while you have them-especially life. Each story follows another in chronological order, exemplifying the life stages of a person from life to death. Despite the fact that the stories describe different people, the protagonists progressively age as the reader moves further along in Dubliners. In addition, when Dubliners begins, nature is beginning a new year. If the readers looks closely, the seasons move on from spring, summer, autumn, until finally at the end it is winter. It is the tiny thought out details which make this text one of the best. There are repeated themes within the stories which send Joyce’s message about the paralysis of Dublin and issues plaguing Irish culture. The Catholic religion looms over many of the characters. Worries about committing sins, GUILT, and remaining in unhappy marriages are all blamed on religion. There is a suggestion of a rhetoric of fear and silence among the people. The Irish live in a society where much goes unspoken until it is too late. The last words of Eveline’s mother in “Eveline” warn her daughter: ‘After pleasure comes pain.’ Ready to escape Ireland with her bethrothed, Eveline cannot.

Her mother’s words bring fear,guilt, she is paralyzed. Due to years of oppression through colonialism-mostly British-the Irish are poor. Not only do they live in poverty, but the ramifications of little freedom and hopelessness in the country has led to alcoholism, abuse, and the feeling of worthlessness among its citizens. In “Araby,” for example, the small boy wants to go to the Araby bazaar. He waits until nine o’clock for his careless, drunken uncle to come home, only for the man to toss him barely enough money to pay for the train to the bazaar. When he finally arrives he must pay the entry fee, and hasn’t enough money to buy anything for the girl he likes.In addition,the people working at the concessions are British and he feels inferior. The poor little soul leaves the event solemn, thinking he had been ‘derided by vanity’ for having wanted to go in the first place. Only a child, he already feels he doesn’t deserve the smallest things out of life. Where will he go from here? Does he have a way out or will he perpetuate the cycle?

The psychological instead of plot driven writing approach Joyce takes with his characters to create a unique situation for each of them allows the reader to understand that despite their paralysis each person deals with it differently. At the same time, it is easy to see how the similar cultural barriers they all face may lead to their immobility in life-the story within a story. The last story of the book, “The Dead” becomes representative of the conclusion of all the other stories. This story deals with the secrets people carry with them all their lives. Gabriel and Gretta are a married couple but when she confesses to him about her broken heart from years before, he finds there are things about loved ones that people may not want to know. There are experiences and pain of others that we cannot relate to. This story communicates the transience of life, shadows, grayness, and loneliness. It is the winter of Gabriel’s life as snows fall outside the window below him. His paralysis is the tendency to keep the past alive. Is he truly dead or only dead at heart? The closing of “The Dead” is one of the most captivating and praised in literature.

The inevitability of life coming to an end and the existential questions: what is the point of trying, striving, living at all, brings this last story and the preceeding stories together with grace and elegance. Joyce is one of the few authors to take the world around him and dig down to it’s core, while still remaining true to his groundbreaking, unparalleled style. Yes he is negative, but his characters are fighters and living such a difficult existence, I don’t know that you can ask for more. Final Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars For more information:

Question: Which novelist wrote 'The Dubliners'?
Answer: JAMES JOYCE