- James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and wrote several famous works set in Dublin depicting realist portraits of everyday life, including Dubliners (1905), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Ulysses (1922). - His style evolved from realism to incorporating interior monologue and symbolism. Dubliners consists of 15 short stories arranged in stages of life from childhood to maturity, dealing with themes of paralysis under restrictive social and cultural traditions. - His final and most famous work, Ulysses, was published serially from 1918-1920 and portrayed a single day in Dublin through stream-of-consciousness narration incorporating various literary techniques. Joyce focused on offering European

1. James Joyce and Dublin
Life
● Born in Dublin, 1882. Studied French, Italian, German and English languages and literatures
and he graduated in modern languages in 1902.
● Interest to European culture and he think himself as a European rather than an Irishman.
● Believed that only way to increase Ireland’s awareness was offering a realistic portrait of its
life from European, cosmopolitan viewpoint.
● Spent some times in Paris but his mother’s illness (1903) brought him back to Dublin.
● In 1904 fell in love with Nora Barnacle.
● In October move to Italy and become friend of Italo Svevo. These years were difficult, filled
with disappointment and financial problems.
● Died in Switzerland in 1941.
● He write:
○ Dubliners collection of short stories about Dublin and Dublin life, 1905.
○ Portrait of the artist as a Young man semi-autobiographical novel, 1916.
○ Exiles most of his naturalistic drama, 1914.
○ Ulysses which was continued with a anonymous donations, 1917.
○ Finnegans Wake, 1923.
Style and technique
● The artist’s task was to render life objectively in order to give back to the readers a true
image of it.
● Not author’s point of view, different points of view and narrative techniques.
● His style, technique and language developed from realism and disciplined prose of
Dubliners, through use of direct speech, through exploration of the characters’ impressions,
to interior monologue with two levels of narration.
● Language broken down into a succession off words without punctuation or grammatical
connection, into infinite puns of symbolic archetypes.
Dubliners
Origin
15 stories that disclose human situations and moments of intensity and lead to a moral, social or
spiritual revelations.
The opening stories deal with childhood in Dublin, the others concern the middle years of
characters and their affairs.
The stories are arranged into 4 groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life.
The last story (The Dead) is denser and more elaborated than others (masterpiece).
Wrote in a traditional way, with use of symbolism.
Use of epiphany
The description is realistic and extremely concise, rich of external detail. The use of realism is
mixed with symbolism, since external details have a deeper meaning. Epiphany is the sudden
spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object or a banaln situation, which is
used to lead the character to a sudden self realization about himself.
Pervasive theme: paralysis
Significant theme in the story is use of paralysis that many of the characters experience as a result
of being tried to antiquated and limited cultural and social traditions. This is also reflected in their
relationship, in wich free expressions is inhibited by repressive moral codes.

2. The Dead-Plot
Begins with an after Christmas dinner party at the house of two unmarried sister house (Miss Kate
and Julia Morkan, aunt of the protagonist Gabriel Conroy). Gabriel goes to the party with his wife
and the house become a microcosm of contemporary Ireland traditions and tendences. Gabriel feels
self-confident and on this way in the hotel he remembers the best moments with Gretta. However,
Gretta had a sad epiphany (revelation related to her past): listening to an Irish song she
remembered her first love, Michael Furey, young man died for her. Hearing this, Gabriel has his
own epiphany. When Gretta fall asleep, he look outside the window (snow) and realized the
insignificance both of his own life, and of those around him: the sense of well-being generated by
the party is seen a harsh new light.
Features and themes
Can be considered symbolic (name Gabriel like the archangel who sound the trumpets at Last
Judgement) and also realistic (descriptions).
Another aspect is the way the writer gives us the pictures of the inner being and feelings. Gabriel’s
final thoughts is one of the first use of indirect interior monologue.
The central event of the story is Gretta’s epiphany, which will lead to Gabriel’s one that coincide
with the first: one is the consequence of another. Another symbol is all-covering snow, reflects on
the insignificance of existence and put all into the oblivion.