Name: Dubliners
Price: 693.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: James Joyce
ISBN: 9781541028692

Type

Physical Book

Author

James Joyce

Illustrated by

Gustavo J. Sanchez

Publisher

Createspace

Language

English

Pages

152

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

22.9 x 15.2 x 0.8 cm

Weight

0.21 kg.

ISBN13

9781541028692

Synopsis "Dubliners"

Dubliners is not a collection of short stories that were written at various periods and with various themes. It is clearly meant to be a unified work of art. Joyce said that he chose Dublin as the setting because it was "the center of paralysis." Yet he also stated that his purpose was to depict "the eventual spiritual liberation of my country." Such a "liberation" could occur only if the Dubliners were to shed the myths about Ireland and face their true situation. The stories of Dubliners are cunningly arranged. The first three stories clearly constitute a unit; they portray the life of a child in Dublin and are filled with disillusionment and a recognition of failure. "Araby" describes a failed quest as a nameless boy promises to go to a bazaar called Araby to buy a gift for a young girl. The boy is a dreamer who ignores daily life to dwell upon his beloved. It is significant that he invests her with religious imagery when he speaks of a "chalice" he is protecting. He also does not see her clearly; she is always a brown shape to him, and he worships his idea of her rather than her true self. On the day of his planned visit to Araby, his uncle is late, and it seems that the boy will not be able to go. Finally, the uncle enters, drunk, and gives him money. It is late when the boy arrives at the bazaar, and he finds not the magic and mystery of his dreams but a woman flirting with two men at a counter. He hears a voice announce that the light is out-a metaphor for the extinguishing of his quest. The epiphany is very harsh: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." The boy feels ashamed of his earlier dreams; he, like the other Dubliners, is incomplete. His dreams have been smashed and he is filled with self-loathing.

James Joyce

(Author)

View Author's Page

James Joyce (Dublin, 1882-Zurich, 1941) was an Irish writer, globally recognized as one of the most important and influential of the 20th century, acclaimed for his masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), and for his controversial later novel, Finnegans Wake (1939). His series of short stories titled Dubliners (1914), as well as his semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), have also been highly valued. Joyce is a prominent representative of the avant-garde literary movement known as Anglo-Saxon modernism, alongside authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, or Wallace Stevens.

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