Gente di Dublino, Lingua e letteratura inglese

Appunti riguardanti l’opera “Dubliners” di James Joyce

Curiosità sull’opera e breve spiegazione di alcuni racconti (Racconti: Sisters, Eveline, Two gallants, A painful case, The dead).

1. Introduction

James Joyce wrote his “Dubliners” in summer 1905, when he was 23 and lived in Trieste. When he sent a copy of the book to his English publisher Grant Richards, who lived in London, he explained the attempt to show, with his collection of 15 short stories, some aspects of Dublin and its citizens.

He wanted to present his town to the world, but not its amenities, the old beautiful corners or the breathtaking sceneries of the city, but the negative aspects of it, the corruption of Dubliners, the paralysis of politics and the religion. For this reason the publisher didn’t publish the book until June 1914.

Joyce said that “Dubliners” was the only authentic description of his land, with its problems. He loved Dublin more than the other places where he had lived, despite he had left it when he was very young, and we can find this close relationship in all his books.

2. Topics

The main topics of “Dubliners” are:

• Paralysis: The characters of the book are very often described while they are going through a moment of paralysis. According to Joyce, these are metaphors of the general situation of Ireland.
• Epiphanies: The meaning of “Epiphany” is explained by Joyce in his autobiographical novel “Stephen Hero”, it is a fleeting moment of revelation about the self or the world, a sort of spiritual manifestation very often showed in some vulgar or ordinary speech or gesture.

3. The book

The book is divided into 15 short stories characterized by the same set, Dublin. The sequence of the stories follows the pattern: Childhood-Adolescence-Maturity and public life.

4. Sisters

It is the first story, and is part of the first life period, the childhood. The main character is a child, who is the same who tells us the events. He was a close friend of Father Flynn, an old priest.

The day after his death he goes to his house with the aunt. Once there they see the corpse in bed and then the aunt starts to talk with the two sisters of Father Flynn, Eliza and Nannie Flynn. They are very old women who lived with their brother and looked after him who was paralyzed.

During the conversation they tell an event in which Father Flynn was involved some years before. He was cleaning a chalice in the sacristy of his church when suddenly it fell and smashed to pieces. After this incident he went crazy. One evening he was discovered into the confessional of the church while he was laughing alone without a reason. This is the Epiphanic moment of the story. The paralysis is here both physi