Recensioni
Dubliners was first published in 1914. The book depicts middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Elegir leer este libro como motivo de mi viaje a Dublín creo que ha sido la mejor idea que he podido tener. Haber paseado por muchas de las calles que se mencionan en él le ha dado un mayor sentimiento de realidad que me ha ayudado a conectar mejor. Además, considero que la historia de Irlanda es increíblemente apasionante, y junto con lo que aprendí en el viaje, creo que me he llevado una lectura completa de sus problemas sociales, estructurales, de su gente... Todos los "cuentos" aportan algo, y Dublín se construía cada vez más nítida según seguía leyendo. A pesar de ello, quiero destacar "Eveline", "Un caso lamentable" y "Los muertos", mis favoritos.
When Joyce began writing his collection, he was short of money and under multiple economical difficulties. Accordingly, he was paid for each finished and submitted story separately by the journal that had undertaken the task of their publication. The little money he had made in the process allowed him to immigrate and thus flee this state of penury, but the stories themselves bore nevertheless the mark of that strain for cash. The eponymous heroine of Eveline, for one, is constantly worried out of her wits by the prospect of want and destitution. Although, the bulk of Joyce's work suggests that economic marginality affects women and children the most, his stories convey at the same time the notion that the lack of money often comes as a blow to masculinity. The book reflects Joyce's rejection of the viewpoint attributing value to art on the basis of religious or moral ideals. While writing his stories, the author had set about the task of purging the Irish imagination of its toxins and obsolete Romanticism. Accordingly, Dubliners is a study in Realism understood to have a moral stance. Its atmosphere quite resembles [a:T.S. Eliot|18540|T.S. Eliot|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1612500008p2/18540.jpg]'s [b:The Waste Land|34080|The Waste Land|T.S. Eliot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597549396l/34080._SY75_.jpg|389834]. Its stories study human incapacities and self-replicating unhappiness. Eveline, for instance, tells the story of a young woman who had had the opportunity to leave her old life of misery behind and start anew with her man, but could not bring herself to cut the ties. A Painful Case is another example studying the progress and life of an old man who flinched from human contact, yet destroyed the only person with whom he could have had a real relationship. Overall, the world of Dubliners is bleak and tough, but Joyce had sketched the lives of his destitute and marginalized characters with the same enthusiasm given to the most distinguished literary heroes and heroines. His ultimate goal was to make art out of the dreary sameness of everyday life. In such an immersion in the task of communicating humanistic views, Joyce had borrowed a term and a concept from the religious realm and established it within the literary sphere, bringing thus the concept of Epiphany to the world of literature.
The book is a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman that follows the development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the beginning of manhood. In terms of composition, it can be read as a symbolic, impressionistic piece, and an ironic treatment of the acute sensitiveness of its focal character. Like earlier novels of personal development including Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, the book begins with a child narrator. But while the earlier specimens of the genre use a sophisticated grammar and a word choice superior to that of a child, Joyce voices the thoughts of an infant in the incomplete and limited language of one using a technique called "colored narrative". This approach emphasizes the inner struggle of Stephen in his attempts to translate his experience into language. The shape of Stephen's young life closely shadows that of Joyce's and conveys his own struggles in a society where artistic expression was doomed to repression and censorship. . Thus, the novel emphasizes the struggles of artists in a restricted society, and deals with such themes as the difficulties of artistic expressions, sexual freedom, and censorship. At the same time, it points out the impact of religious and political strains through Stephen's attempts to free himself from both.
Dubliners is a collection of short stories. Each story depicts middle-class Catholic life in Dublin. I really felt that each part of this book was a build up without a climax. Every time I got settled into a story it would end and it all felt a bit flat. Throughout the book I often forgot that it was even set in Dublin. I just think there could have been a lot more to keep me enticed as a reader. The last story called 'The Dead' was probably my favourite as it was longer and I felt James Joyce had spent a bit more time on giving me something that I wanted from the other stories. I am going to read some of Joyce's other works to see how he writes longer stories and investigate how his writing style grows with his age. He completed writing Dubliners when he was 25 so it is understandable if this isn't one of his best books.