1. Dubliners
By James Joyce

2. Introduction Background on the 20th Century Background on James Joyce
1. Irish heritage

3. B. Background on James Joyce
2. Catholicism—beauty and tyranny--transubstantiation
3. Joyce’s ambition—to be free, a creature of the universe who can think, love, and create
a. To fly the three nets
b. Rousseau: Man is born free and everywhere
he is in chains.
4. Modernism—
a. Naturalist style
b. reaction against Victorianism

4. B. Background on James Joyce
c. high level of intelligence (the triumph of education)
d. new psychological understandings
e. awareness of the history of literature
(allusions) and its purposes

5. Dubliners—the work Basic Themes
1. Joyce’s “polished looking glass” in which the Irish (all peoples) may see themselves as they truly are
2. Paralysis—paralyzed how? From what? In what way?
--Esau and Jacob story: we have sold our birthright (our soul, our possibilities) for a bowl of porridge (convenience, comfort, security, pride, money, etc.)

6. II.A. Dubliners Basic Themes
3. Dubliners is “ a group of short stories and a novel, the separate histories of its protagonists composing one essential history, that of the soul of a people which has confused and weakened its relation to the source of spiritual life and cannot restore it.”
Brewster Ghiselin
--These are people trapped in the wasteland (the living of inauthentic lives).

7. Dubliners’ Basic Themes
4. death
5. the problems of organized religion
a. Ireland =all nations
b. Catholicism=all org. religions
6. the possibility of true redemption

8. II. B. Recurring Imagery and Symbolism
East and west
Light and dark (shadows)
Music
colors

9. II. B. Recurring Imagery/Symbols
Clothing
Food / drink (eucharist)
Water (baptism)
The sea

10. II. B. Recurring Imagery/Symbols
Enclosure
The far country (escape)
substitutes