Hey everyone!
I've just gotten done with my third semester of studying
Dubliners. And Irish literature is my concentration within my major, so I have a few things to say! lol I have so many ideas about these things... just stop me if I get too verbose
If you all don't mind... I'm just going to make some notes and suggestions for reading
btw, I've found that the best edition of this book is the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition with Intro and Notes by Terence Brown
I would definitely recommend a version with notes of some sort... Joyce put so much information in these stories that's hard to find on your own (no matter how smart you are! lol) Plus, sometimes understanding even the most obscure detail helps (me at least) in an understanding of the whole collection. I've actually written two papers now based on the notes and some obscure detail I wanted to explore!
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The stories are arranged in sets:
Stories of Childhood:
"The Sisters"
"An Encounter"
"Araby"
Stories of Adoloscence:
"Eveline"
"After the Race"
"Two Gallants"
"The Boarding House"
Stories of Maturity:
"A Little Cloud"
"Counterparts"
"Clay"
"A Painful Case"
Stories of Irish Public Life:
"Ivy Day..." - deals with politics
"A Mother" - deals with art
"Grace" - deals with religion
"The Dead" - deals with literature and the Irish revival (among so much else)
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General things to look for:
- Take note that all the stories are interwoven. The main theme of
Dubliners is relatedness... everything is related! So the same themes, characters, and situations recur from story to story, but always with a slight twist.
-
Dubliners is also full of epiphanies. Joyce kept a notebook of them which he used in all of his work. In each chapter the characters usually come to some sort of epiphany (revelation, enlightenment).
- Joyce's three main themes of the book are introduced within the first page:
Theme 1:
PARALYSIS - Dublin, the city, is a symbol of paralysis for Joyce and for his characters. It is a city from which they can never escape. Joyce represents this in the circularity of his stories and images. For example, both the first and last stories feature "sisters." Not only are these characters usually confined in the city, they are victims of their own weaknesses which paralyze them.
Theme 2:
GNOMON - This is perhaps the most important to understand. A gnomon is a parallelogram with a smaller parallelgram removed from it. Like this: (the white part has been completely removed)
This is important because most of these characters are gnomon's themselves: people with parts missing. This contributes to their paralysis. Also, Joyce loves to use the ellpsis (this: "...") to cut out dialogue. If you notice, in
Dubliners there is a lack of complete sentences. People will often trail off in the middle of sentences... leaving us to guess what they said. This is also a form of gnomon.
Theme 3:
SIMONY - selling salvation. I'm sure most of you know the history of this. It's importance for
Dubliners is that it represents defective spirituality. This is another form of gnomon, essentially, and contributes to the paralysis of all Dubliners.
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There's so much more I could say in introduction to such a fantastic text... but I won't. lol Needless to say, I'm happy to help anyone with reading or explaining or just talking about this book. It's one of my all-time favorite books, and reveals something new to me everytime I read it.
I hope I didn't bore you with this... but I feel that I enjoyed
Dubliners more when I had been given this information... so I hope it helps at least a little bit.
If you have anymore questions or just want to talk email or IM anytime!
hippy@u2email.com
AIM: PlaysTheTart
Enjoy!
thanks hippy! 
at the moment. this is going to be fun. going to the library on thursday to get the book.
)
