Let's start a Dubliners thread. I liked what you had to say in class yesterday very much and would welcome any further discussion of open-ended narrative, atypical or fragmented plot structures, authenticating details, or comparisons to/tie-ins with Yeats and Wilde or anything else (yes, including comic books, Andy). Here are a few things I wouldn't mind reading about:
1. Some critics argue that the main character in Dubliners is the city of Dublin itself. How do you feel about this? Can any place transcend "setting" and function as a character?
2. Do you feel as though you gain something from reading the stories together, as a collection, as opposed to reading only a few of them? I realize it may be impossible to know how you would react to a story on its own, separated from the others, but it isn't impossible to see what is gained from reading them as parts of a whole (perhaps wholeness isn't the best adjective to use when discussing Joyce, but you know what I mean). For example, what common motifs, images, situations, themes, landmarks, etc. run through the stories, and what effect does this have on you as a reader?
3. Joyce was skeptical of the Celtic Revival, famously saying, "I distrust all enthusiams." However, as important to Ireland's identity as revivalist texts were/are, could it not be argued that Joyce's depictions of Dublin's political climate, religious tensions, family life, sexuality, stagnation, etc. are ultimately some of the most substantive texts when it comes to modern Ireland's identity?
4. Could Joyce's stories be called, in Yeatsian terms, "the fascination of what's difficult"?
5. Joyce once wrote in a letter that "Two Gallants" is "one of the most important stories in the book," and he said he would "rather sacrifice five other stories" than lose that one. Why do you think this is?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have a really hard time thinking of Dublin merely as "setting" within these stories. It seems that Joyce is essentially painting a portrait of Dublin. The characters within the story or Dubliners and yet he doesn't develop them as much as he would if they were actually the character of the book. I think this is done intentionally, and might have even been a major reason why the stories weren't typical of their time and why they didn't resolve.
ReplyDeleteTwo Gallants has been my favorite story so far and in my best estimation, the best representation of Dublin. The story had a lot of complexity and perhaps the most complete character development(in my estimation) and if I had the time, I would read it a couple more times. What was the deal with the gold coin at the end? I wish I could answer the question(#5) right now but I think I need to give it another read.
I think Dublin, as a “character,” is even greater than its (her?) human counterparts. Unlike the characters, Dublin can be used in more than one method; as a character, certainly; Paris has often been described as a woman, so why not Dublin? It would also make sense because, in a way, the characters are an extension of Dublin; they are characterized, but their fates are left open, just in the way a city’s fate is left open by all who reside within. They can let it rot, or they can turn it beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt’s also almost as ambiguous as many of the characters that we’ve read about so far. In that way, Dublin is just as noble, just as dastardly as any of its characters. In a way, it’s almost an insinuation, as though James was inviting us to view the characters from the city’s perspective?
The gold coin . . . I don’t know. It almost seemed to have some sort of Biblical reference, because of the disciple before it? Or is that just me, and it was using “disciple” as referring to the attention spent on him? And it was a sovereign according to the book, while the Savior was sold for thirty pieces of silver. The only other reference I can think of from the Bible might be the various people who lose and find gold coins, so maybe I’m just looking too closely and they’re not related at all.
Daniel asked if a setting can transcend into a character and I think Wuthering Heights by Bronte is a good example of how it can. I am not a big fan of that book, but the setting acts almost as a constant narrator of sorts. Yeats often wrote of the Spirit of Ireland, like a musical tune that permeated from the land, which Joyce draws upon as well, in my opinion, with his piece about the Harp. This tune seems to be playing in all the stories, and connects the characters. So my question then is, is it the actual setting of Ireland, or the spirit of Ireland that is a character in Dubliners?
ReplyDeleteI promised to post a link to "The Shiela Variations," the blog I read from in class on Friday. Her Joyce page can be found at http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/cat_joyce.html.
ReplyDeleteAt risk of obnoxiously tying everything back to comic books, reading Dubliners constantly reminded me of the early Marvel comics of the 1960s. One of the big innovations that occurred during this time was that the characters were in a shared universe based on a real place. Batman and Superman hung out, sure, and they'd visit Metropolis and Gotham and Central City (nerd points if you know who lived there), but Spider-Man lived in Queens, the Fantastic Four had a building in Manhattan, Captain America grew up in Brooklyn, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I get that similar feeling in Joyce's stories. You get the idea that Mahony and his friend may have gone to the bazaar, or that maybe Eveline was the young woman selling merch at the bazaar, etc. etc. That element of potential interconnection automatically lends the stories some authenticity and an extra sense of reality that is hard to find.