Style, text and context in James Joyce's Dubliners

Joyce identified the style of his short story collection Dubliners as one of ‘scrupulous meanness’. The book’s diminished subject matter, along with its employment of the epiphany (a term coined by Joyce), and its deliberate lack of evident authorial intrusion which allows its characters inadvertently to reveal their truths, marked the beginning of a new style in 20th-century literature. The course will consider Dubliners’ innovations of style and substance, studying the individual stories partly through the historical and cultural context of Joyce’s time.

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

The learning outcomes for this course are:

• 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.  

Classes

1. ‘To write a chapter of the moral history of my country’: an introduction to Joyce’s Dubliners, background and beyond
2. Dubliners: narratives of childhood (‘The Sisters’, ‘An Encounter’, and ‘Araby’)
3. Dubliners: narratives of adolescence (‘Eveline’, ‘After the Race’, ‘Two Gallants’, ‘The Boarding House’)
4. Dubliners: narratives of adult life and public life (‘A Little Cloud’, ‘Counterparts’, ‘Clay’, ‘A Painful Case’, ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’, ‘A Mother’, and ‘Grace’)
5. Dubliners’ conclusion, ‘to forge in the smithy of [his] soul the uncreated conscience of [his] race’: ‘The Dead’ 

Required reading

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Penguin Modern Classics, 2000. Please bring your copy with you. 

Typical week: Monday to Friday

For each week of study you select a morning (Am) and an afternoon (Pm) course, each course has five sessions, one each day Monday to Friday. The maximum class size is 25 students. Your weekly courses are complemented by a series of two daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £65 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically within a week of your courses finishing.