"Be kind to the Polar Bear, When in the wild, leave him there." First line of "Ursus ...
"Be kind to the Polar Bear, When in the wild, leave him there." First line of "Ursus Maritimus" written by myself, see my poetry opinion if you want to read the whole thing.
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Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce, 15 in all, written about the people and places in Dublin.(Oddly enough) James Joyce (1882-1941) was born in Dublin to a middle class catholic family, whose social and economic status declined during Joyce's youth and adolescence. "Dubliners" Joyce himself remarked, was meant to reveal the paralysis at the heart of Irish society. Each of the 15 stories deals with a different aspect of Dublin life. Joyce claimed there was a structural progression followed, from childhood to adolescence through to adulthood and private life. (Though this is disputed by some) If you know little about Joyce, as I did, this is an excellent place to start finding out. I wasn't really going to bother, I thought until my wife collected enough i Points to afford a trip to Dublin. The ferry we went on was called the "Ulysses" There was a round the boat quiz going like a treasure trail, all to do with James Joyce. Indeed the boat itself was named after his most famous novel. Then around Dublin itself were marked various places that James Joyce had written about in his books. So eventually I
forked out £1.50 to buy a Wordsworth classics version of Dubliners and afforded myself a first James Joyce reading experience. Wordsworth Classics have a web presence at www.wordsworth-editions.com. This book, new or possibly second hand, can be bought from www.Amazon.co.uk At Amazon last time I looked in there were 46 used and new versions. Your local book shop may have a cheap copy also.
The book, complete and unabridged contains an introduction which you are advised to read after you have read the book. You also read the short stories using the notes at the back. These are very useful to understand words and expressions (for instance) "up to the knocker" meaning "tall enough for the job, morally speaking";and "hunker-sliding" meaning "creeping and crawling." Also there are numerous references to places, people and publications relevant to the time, frequently alluding to the politics and religion specific to the area and the time. I wondered how a man could live like an exile abroad and yet remember in great detail so many things about his home. Joyce wrote most of Dubliners in Trieste in 1905 . It was not published until 1914. As though burned in his brain the minutiae of the Irish middle classes, the rainy, misty streets and alleys of Dublin acted out like a quaint reflection of Irish national longing. Yet the realism he used was not seen in a favourable way by Irish publishers and was eventually published by a London publisher, Grant Richards. In it's time it was a new way of writing,(I think) related to the “streams of consciousness” made famous by Virginia Wolfe and others, and yet realistic and true to life in great detail. . These “Dubliners” stories tell of truants, seducers, gossips, rally-drivers, generous hostesses, corrupt politicians, failing priests, amateur theologians, struggling musicians, moony adolescents, victims of domestic violence, sentimental aunts and poets, both serious patriots and cynical ones, and people trying to survive.
Araby A boy desperately wants to win the affection of Mangan's sister by visiting a mysteriously named charity bazaar. Eveline; Eveline seeks to escape her cruel, mean father.
After the Race Two Gallants The Boarding House
A Little Cloud Little Chandler fancies himself as a literary swell in London
Counterparts Farrington wants a drink, and then more.
Clay Maria yearns for the days before there had been a family quarrel
A Painful Case James Duffy yearns for nothing at all; safer than others in these stories whose longing is matched by their disillusionment.
The Dead. Gabriel drinks from one Dublin bar to another, evoking a Dublin hospitality belonging a half century before to charm his guests at a party.
Somewhere in the introduction it says; "It is a work both intensely local and broadly cosmopolitan. It lies open to reading as a collection of stories challenging every theme and every convention of earlier Irish literature and as a book rooted in the continental fiction of Joyce's day but branching and blossoming into the world of colonial and post colonial literature".
Joyce was influenced by Ibsen, and would establish for himself in "Dubliners": "even the most commonplace, the deadest among the living, may play a part in a great drama." Here is an intimately observed portrait of a city and its people at a time of radical social and political change. He writes in a great deal of commonplace detail, he does not moralise, he seems fascinated by sexual misbehaviour and delights in shocking the pious. Perhaps every aspect of the city of Dublin is not covered here. There are no accounts of the upper classes and none of the lowest, here are the middle and lower middle class people; clerks, salesmen, journalists, boarding house keepers, political hacks and jobbing musicians. This surely reflects Joyce's own upbringing and experience, accentuated and dealt with in greater depth in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." There’s definitely something wonderfully Irish about it all, it feels well written and knowledgeable, creative and challenging in it’s own way, a classic work worth having a read of, I’d say.
Pictures of Dubliners - James Joyce
Young James Joyce
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Advantages: Being Irish, I can assure you that this is an accurate and well written depiction of Dublin at the time. Disadvantages: The Short story form prevents a great build of characters, but instead gives short extracts of their lives
Advantages: Being Irish, I can assure you that this is an accurate and well written depiction of Dublin at the time. Disadvantages: The Short story form prevents a great build of characters, but instead gives short extracts of their lives
Mar 5th, 2004
very helpful by (98%):
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