dubliners. james joyce

DUBLINERS by James

Joyce.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories about people in Dublin, written in 1905 by a young Joyce, and published almost a decade later because his publisher considered the contents of the manuscript could be a bit scandalous.

In the book, Joyce describes human situations with stark realism and as a pretext to criticize Irish society and to expose his personal feelings and thoughts about the decline of a glorious eighteen-century Ireland.

The minutely detailed description and realistic portraits of life in Dublin are used to reject the whole contemporary social order and the Catholic Bourgeois nationalism which keeps people paralyzed and stuck in the past.

Most of the characters are spiritually weak, fearful people slaves of conventional, moral, cultural, religious and political life.

Perhaps it contains autobiographical material, his roots in Dublin life which he abandoned early in life , to live on the “Continent” with a companion.

The stories are arranged into four group of themes as Joyce once explained, and want to show these portraits to make the reader react and take up a position against “unchangeably” situations.

There is a group of stories about childhood:• “The sisters”• “An encounter”• “Araby”

Another group about adolescence: • “Eveline” • “After the race”• “Two gallants”• “The boarding house”

Another group mature life: • “A little cloud”• “Counter part”• “Clay”• “A painful case”

and the last group about Public life: • “ Ivy day in the committee room” • “A mother” • “Grace”

• and the longer story “The Dead”.

It´s evident the influence of Flaubert , Ibsen and even Dickens on the book. Flaubert just in the form of narration an omniscient but invisible author who doesn´t express his points of view, only depicts scenes from life in Dublin.

But Joyce doesn´t investigate too much in the scenery or characters… the Flaubert obsession.

Ibsen´s influence can be found in the defiant realism and the independence of mind of the author, although the reader can easily identify the sources of much of the human misery…

…in the lack of activity of the characters who range from the “unfruitful “ bachelorhood of Mr. Duffy to a group of narrow minded characters as in most of the protagonists of the stories.

But the book is more than a series of sketches set in a particular place (Dublin) linked by an author´s point of view.

It´s a number of citizens, a work of complex patterns of repetitions, parallels, and images used to establish a vision of life, Irish life.

The use of some

metaphors symbols(such as eating or

drinking) seem to play a part of the description.

• The reader can see Dickensian images too in “The dead”, which gives an impression of a paralyzed society.

Descriptions are extremely concise, naturalistic and detailed. The style of the book is made realistic by the use of a wide range of these details.

Joyce uses different narrating techniques such as direct speech, interior monologue and varied use of language according to social class and characters impressions and points of view.

The book is a collage of Dublin society of late nineteenth century, a flash in time perhaps it´s the reason why it´s said that it´s a difficult book.