Dubliners Background

1
DublinersBackground

• A. The process of publication
• - Begin to write
  1904
• - Complete most of them 1905
• - London publisher, Grant Richards 1905
• 
  (1906)
• - Publish
  1914

2
Dubliners Background B. Controversial points

• - The true incidents
• - The true settings libelous
• He paused at last before the window of a
  poor-looking shop over
• which the words Refreshment Bar were
  printed in white letters.
• On the glass of the window were two
  flying inscriptions Ginger
• Beer and Ginger Ale. (Two Gallants)
• - The wild words bloody, blasphemous
• She brought me two bloody fine cigars.
  (Two Gallants)
• At dinner, you know. Then he has a bloody
  big bowl of cabbage
• before him on the table and a bloody big
  spoon like a shovel.
• (Grace)

3
DublinersBackground

• C. Authors opinion
• - To create effect
• - A nicely polished
  looking-glass
• - A chapter of moral history
• - The first step
  of the spiritual liberation
• Reference Richard Ellmann,
• 
  Selected letters of James Joyce

4
Dubliners Structure Theme

• A. Structure
• -- A collection of 15 short stories
•  
• -- The process of a persons growth
• - children ? the old
• - individual ? social life
• - dream ? disappoint, despair

5
Dubliners Structure

• I. Childhood
• 1. The Sisters
• 2. An Encounter
• 3. Araby 
• II. Adolescence
• 4. Eveline
• 5. After the Race
• 6. Two Gallants
• 7. The Boarding House

• III. Maturity
• 8. A Little Cloud
• 9. Counterparts
• 10. Clay
• 11. A Painful Case
•  
• IV. Public life
• 12.  Ivy Day in the Committee Room
• 13. A Mother
• 14. Grace
• (Epilogue) 15. The Dead

6
Dubliners Theme

• B. Theme
• a. The paralysis of Dublin
• It (paralysis) had always sound
  strangely in my ears. But
• now it sounded to me like the name of
  some maleficent and sinful
• being. It filled me with the fear,
  and yet I longed to be nearer to
• it and to look upon its deadly work.
  (The Sisters)
•  death
• There was no hope for him this time it
  was the third stroke.
• (The Sisters)

7
Dubliners Theme

• emptiness (Araby)
•   a prisoner for life- spiritual
  weakness
• She set her white face to him,
  passive, like a helpless animal.
• (Eveline)
• Its useless. The wailing of the child
  pierced the drum of his ear.
• The tears of remorse started to his
  eyes.(A Little Cloud)
• b. The style of scrupulous meanness
• - irony sympathy coexist

8
Dubliners Technique

• A. Realism
• B. Detachment Show, dont tell.
• C. Epiphany
• 1. Religious term A Christian festival
• 2. Joyces term To realize in a moment
• D. Symbolism Metaphor
• E. Literary Reference