Written across 1904 to 1907, but not published until 1914, Dubliners saw Joyce inventing the modern short story in an early modernist development which would lead through his autobiographical first novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to the unparalleled epic literary revolution of Ulysses, and finally to the enigmatic universality of Finnegans Wake. Yet Joyce argued the continuity of his work, that ‘from Dubliners on […] My whole work is always in progress’, and many of the concerns of his oeuvre can be found in his first work.
Joyce evidently conceived of the Irish as his primary readers for Dubliners, and these Irish readers were the inhabitants of a particular historical context - initially Dublin c.1907. Clearly, Joyce intended Dubliners to be realistic and revelatory. As he remarked of Dubliners in 1906: ‘It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass’. This course will look at Joyce’s intentions and stylistic concerns and innovations, against the background of the context of the Ireland he so boldly and uncompromisingly addressed in the struggle for what he termed ‘the spiritual liberation of my country’.
Learning outcomes
- An understanding of Dubliners’ stories in terms of the Ireland which Joyce specifically intended them to address (variously, their social, cultural, and political contexts);
- An understanding of Dubliners’ signal place stylistically within early 20th-century literature, as marking the innovation of the modernist short story;
- An appreciation of the stories both individually and collectively as part of the book’s overall structure;
- An understanding and recognition of the seeming difficulties of Dubliners strategically as a core and necessary part of Joyce’s literary vision.
