Hi folks,
This week's homework is to read the rest of James Joyce's short story, 'The Sisters'. You can find an online version of 'Dubliners' here, or you can listen to 'The Sisters' (Irish accent and all) here.
I've also asked you to read section 1.1 of the critical anthology.
On Friday, we'll discuss the story and how it relates to the first section of the anthology; we'll discuss its plot elements, structure and characters; we'll look to map out its structure and reach conclusions about its meanings.
A few introductory points about Joyce and 'Dubliners':
Dubliners is not merely a group of short stories structured according to stages of human development. Joyce meant Dubliners to be read as a novel of a city’s development, with its inhabitants growing from innocence to experience. In letter to a prospective editor, Joyce wrote:
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country, and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.
This unity and sense of structure in the collection makes it ideal for the purposes of your coursework. Reading one story from each section would give you more than enough to go on. Another selling point for this collection is the theme of human development. Finally, as one of the most famous collections of short stories in all of literature, there is an easily accessible wealth of criticism to be found and lots of material online to help you.
Mr M
I've also asked you to read section 1.1 of the critical anthology.
On Friday, we'll discuss the story and how it relates to the first section of the anthology; we'll discuss its plot elements, structure and characters; we'll look to map out its structure and reach conclusions about its meanings.
A few introductory points about Joyce and 'Dubliners':
The stories can be split into the following sections:
- Childhood, contains “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” and “Araby” (the most anthologized of the stories).
- Adolescence, is made up of “Eveline,” “After the Race,” “Two Gallants,” and “The Boarding House."
- Maturity, also is made up of four stories, “A Little Cloud,” “Counterparts,” “Clay,” and “A Painful Case.”
- Public Life, is made up of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” “A Mother,” “Grace,” and the structurally different “The Dead.”
Dubliners is not merely a group of short stories structured according to stages of human development. Joyce meant Dubliners to be read as a novel of a city’s development, with its inhabitants growing from innocence to experience. In letter to a prospective editor, Joyce wrote:
My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country, and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.
(from Herbert Gorman, James Joyce, New York, 1940, V-iv.)
This unity and sense of structure in the collection makes it ideal for the purposes of your coursework. Reading one story from each section would give you more than enough to go on. Another selling point for this collection is the theme of human development. Finally, as one of the most famous collections of short stories in all of literature, there is an easily accessible wealth of criticism to be found and lots of material online to help you.
You can read more about James Joyce and 'Dubliners' here.
Mr M
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