Dubliners in James Joyce Reading Group

Jun 29, 2015 Gearóid rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Really excellent stories.
Hard to believe Joyce wrote this at 25 years of age.
Very interesting for me to read as it all seemed strangely
familiar because of course I know a lot of the places he
describes but also because of stories my dad and grandparents
have old me over the years about Dublin in the olden days.

I am glad to have read this as I have struggled with Ulysses
for so long and now feel my journey with Joyce has finally
started!

Very rich and beautiful use of the English language.

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Apr 12, 2014 Jon rated it it was amazing

My edition of Dubliners includes the text, criticism and various editorial notes. I will not expand upon the excellent commentary made by many of you already about the moral conflicts faced by virtually all of the characters in these stories.

But I do want to address an interesting comment made by one of the critics I read, to see how you perceive these stories in the context of Joyce's literary output. Put simply, a critic named Brewster Ghiselin, in his article entitled "The Unity of Joyce's D My edition of Dubliners includes the text, criticism and various editorial notes. I will not expand upon the excellent commentary made by many of you already about the moral conflicts faced by virtually all of the characters in these stories.

But I do want to address an interesting comment made by one of the critics I read, to see how you perceive these stories in the context of Joyce's literary output. Put simply, a critic named Brewster Ghiselin, in his article entitled "The Unity of Joyce's Dubliners," makes the claim that Dubliners can be read as a structurally and unitarily compact novel, and not as merely a collection of short stories.

He provides plenty of analysis to support this claim. I will not go into the complex moral issues he explores, most of which devolve from the Irish Catholic catechism. But I will offer his statement that the numerous images of Dubliners "give a firm symbolic texture and pattern to the individual stories of Dubliners and enhance the integrity of the work as a whole....When the outlines of the symbolic pattern have been grasped, the whole unifying development will be discernible as a sequence of events in a moral drama, an action of the human spirit struggling for survival under the peculiar conditions of deprivation, enclosed and disabled by a degenerate environment that provides none of the primary necessities of spiritual life. So understood, Dubliners will be seen for what it is, in effect, both a group of short stories and a novel, the separate histories of its protagonists composing one essential history, that of the soul of the people which has confused and weakened its relation to the source of spiritual life and cannot restore it. In so far as this unifying action is evident in the realistic elements of the book, it appears in the struggle of certain characters to escape the constricting circumstances of existence in Ireland, and especially in Dublin, the "centre of paralysis."

I realize this concept cannot be explained in a conventional novel, but I do think its conclusion, from The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby, Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, The Boarding House, A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, to A Painful Case, to Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and The Dead, is to portray multiple personalities as a singular protagonist of the life of the soul of all people.

What do you think? Can its multiple narratives be combined in such a way as to lead the reader to a conclusion of moral paralysis in Dublin, in Ireland, and ultimately all people?

And if so, is it a novel in some way? I think it is very possible.
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May 07, 2013 Garrett Cash rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, british, cityisacharacter, short-stories, irish-lit

James Joyce's Dublin is a dismal, dreary city full of incessant repetition, lost dreams, constant frustrations, religious tension, and death. When Gabriel breaks down in The Dead exclaiming “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” we understand his pain.
Joyce is considered a genius and one of the greatest writers in the English language. I have not read any of his works other than this one, and I would say solely from this, that the title is thoroughly deserved. While I felt the writing was as ...more

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Aug 18, 2014 Dana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-i-ve-read

A book composed of short stories which weave together a heart of a city. The intimacy these stories hold within them, the way one could identify with each character, and the simple stories which behind them lies the complexity of daily life makes this book a heartwarming read.

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