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Dubliners by James Joyce
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Dubliners (original 1914; edition 1977)

by James Joyce

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19,589224234 (3.9)1 / 472
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. The fifteen stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.The stories were written at the time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They center on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.… (more)
Member:OWSLibrary
Title:Dubliners
Authors:James Joyce
Info:Grafton Books (1977), Edition: reprint, Paperback, 208 pages
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Dubliners by James Joyce (1914)

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 Literary Centennials: James Joyce: Dubliners1 unread / 1baswood, April 2014

» See also 472 mentions

English (205)  Spanish (5)  Italian (4)  German (2)  Dutch (2)  Chinese, simplified (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  French (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (222)
Showing 1-5 of 205 (next | show all)
I found this collection of Joyce's short stories less compelling and insightful than I had expected, and of variable quality and impact. ( )
  sfj2 | Mar 10, 2024 |
I sometimes feel Goodreads is a place to record for posterity misrememberings, misreadings. This struck me forcibly as I came to scribble thoughts on ‘Dubliners’. I have not ever been more appalled by my lack of critical sense in my younger self than with this book. Read quickly in its entirety at 16, I have since bought entirely into the high level critical myth about ‘The Dead’ (and read that story again many times). By which I mean the view which states that here is one of the most magnificent examples of the genre, worthy of its place in any anthology whose goal is to be authoritative and one which is also entirely suitable to be published on its own. The issuing of the story in its own self contained form is an interesting phenomenon and one which of course predates eBooks as any quick search on Goodreads will show. I’d go further and say that the Huston film was the final affirmation of that story’s status, nothing less than a canonical endorsement. This is all fine to an extent but viewing the rest of ‘Dubliners’ as a kind of virtuosic trial for the masterpiece with which it ends misses so much not only about the rest of the book but what reading the other stories first can reveal to us about ‘The Dead’. I do understand that in the world of Joyce scholarship this view would be regarded as so trite and self evident that it would be embarrassing to comment on it, but in the world of ‘real’ readers I think it can’t be repeated enough.
It is not just that the book is, as I have said, a brilliant exercise in variety, of the continual reinvention of the form and its conventions, of an adoption of a new voice for each story complete with stylistical difficulties overcome with laughable ease, but as much that within this abundance of riches there is a brilliantly sustained set of themes and a patterning which could only be achieved with a musician’s ear and compositional sense. We move from underlying unease (‘The Sisters’) to downright disturbing (‘An Encounter’) from bleakness and tragedy (‘Eveline’) to something so new and real (‘Araby’) that it would not be out of place in an anthology of new stories from the 21st century. And this is less than a quarter of the way into the book.
Next, see what Joyce does in ‘After the Race’. This is the sort of material that Hemingway would have picked up and run with, in some ways the most obviously ‘modern’ subject matter in the collection, but Joyce deliberately subverts the newness of car racing into something Jamesian. Not just in its narrative development but in its style and syntax. Well, actually, I think Joyce realises the issues with the Jamesian sentence and unfussily replaces it with something better:
'At the crest of the hill at Inchicore sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homewards and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry’
I could go on, but my by now tiresomely obvious concluding point is the impact 'The Dead' has. You realise holding the book that you are reading something that is approximately a third of the overall length which is intriguing. The very opening sentence with its unliteral use of ‘literally’ emphasises how deeply into that world you are because of the immersive effect of the previous stories. And what a perfectly poised story this is, what a devastating emotional effect it has. There is nothing new to say about it, but I can't help being struck by its obvious influences Tolstoy, Chekov, Ibsen, James and the extent to which Joyce has shaped and perfected them and matched them to the environment.
You've already spent too long reading this review - pick up the book now. ( )
  djh_1962 | Jan 7, 2024 |
The Irish poet of the English language, James Joyce, has captured here the absolute spirit of early 20th century Dublin in a collection of short stories about various people carrying on their lives. Joyce makes the mundane fascinating and, while few of his stories are wildly dramatic, all are infused with real life and the longings and pleasures of people who seem as real as the ones we meet every day. Included in the collection is his acclaimed story "The Dead," which lives up to its reputation. This edition has a magnificent set of footnotes that provide detailed background into the city of Dublin and the smallest of obscure references. ( )
  jumblejim | Aug 26, 2023 |
Reread after many long years.

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

"The Dead" is so brilliant because it defies the reader's expectations at every turn, leading to a powerful culmination of these vignettes of life in Dublin. Gabriel Conroy suffers a kind of imposter syndrome. Even though he is loved and respected, he understands that there is a deeper attitude and emotional world to which he doesn't belong. What could be a petty reaction to his wife's sorrow transforms into a more general meditation on death.

If Joyce has a larger project in his fiction, it is the attempt to connect the domestic and the cosmic. The retelling of The Odyssey in Ulysses is a perfect framework for this - it is all about the liminal state between the home and the larger world. Dubliners introduces this theme, as in each story it questions the meaning of home in terms of the literal hearth and the homeland of the Irish nation, the familiar trappings of Dublin city. ( )
  jonbrammer | Jul 1, 2023 |
Not so pleasant to read, maybe, but engrossing. And, of course, "The Dead" Joyce's very famous story about life. ( )
  mykl-s | Jun 30, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 205 (next | show all)

» Add other authors (119 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Joyce, Jamesprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Brown, TerenceEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cabrera Infante, GuillermoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Cancogni, FrancaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Clarke, J. J.Photographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Colum, PadraicIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Davidson, FrederickNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Deane, SeamusEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Doyle, GerardNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ellmann, RichardEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Fleckhaus, WillyCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hynes, TadhgNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Jacques, RobinIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Johnson, JeriEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McCallion, DavidNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McCann, ColumForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
McKenna, T. P.Narratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Muradov, RomanCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Norton, JimNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
O'Brien, GerryNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Reichert, KlausEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Scholes, Robert E.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Senn, FritzEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Zet, ApfelCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Zimmer, Dieter E.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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The Sisters

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
An encounter: It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us.
Araby: North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.
Eveline: She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
After the race: The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets in the groove of the Naas Road.
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Traversando il Grattan Bridge abbassò gli occhi con compatimento sulla fila dei miseri aborti di case lungo le rive del fiume. Gli apparivano come un branco di vagabondi ammucchiati gli uni addosso agli altri sulla banchina, coi vecchi pastrani fuligginosi e infangati; vagabondi stupefatti dal panorama del tramonto, che attendessero il primo freddo notturno per alzarsi, riscuotersi e partire.
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Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. The fifteen stories were meant to be a naturalistic depiction of the Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.The stories were written at the time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They center on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.

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This Signet Classic paperback was based on the 1968 revised edition of the 1958 Viking Compass edition of 'Dubliners' prepared by Robert Scholes and published by Penguin Books.
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Penguin Australia

4 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141182458, 0140186476, 0241956854, 0141199628

Urban Romantics

2 editions of this book were published by Urban Romantics.

Editions: 1909175722, 1909175463

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