James Joyce

Adaptation, Dossiers and Activities by P. Della Valle
 Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories started by a very young James Joyce in 1904 and finished in 1907.
 A feeling of stagnation pervades Dublin and its inhabitants, whose lives are dominated by frustration, inertia, alcoholism, poverty and conformity. The resulting picture is one of afflicted humanity, trying to escape from its destiny but always failing.
 Seven stories have been chosen which represent the four phases of life singled out by Joyce: childhood (An Encounter, Araby), adolescence (Eveline, The Boarding House), maturity (A Little Cloud, A Painful Case), public life (A Mother).
 The book is enriched by an introduction to Dubliners and several inserts on Joyce and the Irish literary situation of the time.
 Teacher's Resources available online: Answer Key - Audioscripts - Key to Summing-up Activities. 
 
 Dubliners è una raccolta di racconti iniziati da Joyce poco più che ventenne. I protagonisti sono persone comuni di Dublino viste nelle loro quotidianità. Il filo conduttore dei racconti è costituito da due elementi: la paralisi e la fuga, volta al tentativo – sempre fallimentare – di liberarsi dall’immobilismo della realtà irlandese.
 In questa antologia sono stati scelti sette racconti che rappresentano le quattro fasi della vita individuate da Joyce: l’infanzia, l’adolescenza, la maturità, la vita pubblica.

Introduction to Dubliners

Story 1 – An Encounter

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Extension: Joyce and Trieste

Story 2 – Araby

Story 3 – Eveline

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Extension: Joyce and Modernism

Story 4 – The Boarding House

Story 5 – A Little Cloud

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Extension: Joyce and the Cinema

Story 6 – A Painful Case

Story 7 – A Mother

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Extension: The Irish Revival

Summing-up activities

Glossary

Trieste, or  Tarry-Easty  as Joyce called it in Finnegans Wake, had become the most important port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and remained an imperial centre up until the outbreak of World War I. It was a cosmopolitan city including Italian, Slav and Austrian communities. This rich social mix stimulated Joyce s insatiable curiosity. Its babel of languages fed his musical ear and influenced his writings, especially Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Joyce s pupils included several of Trieste s important personalities: noblemen, businessmen and intellectuals. Many of them were Jewish2 and through them he was able to gather the necessary material to create his Dublin-Jewish character in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom. Joyce saw links between the Irish and the Jews, as they shared the same heritage of dispossession3 and an obsession with the past. Among his students was Ettore Schmitz, alias Italo Svevo, a Catholic of Jewish origin who was quite impressed by the keen intelligence and wide culture of his twenty-five-year-old Irish tutor. While Joyce was writing the last stories of Dubliners he used to read them to Svevo. The latter shyly confessed to Joyce that he, too,  had once had ambitions to be a writer  and showed him two novels he had published at his own expense many years before (Senilità and Una Vita) but which had gone unnoticed by the Triestine critics. Joyce s comment on the works of the forty-six-year-old resigned writer was:  Do you know that you are a neglected4 writer? There are passages in Senilità that even Anatole France5 could not have improved.  Although their friendship never became too personal or went beyond an exchange of ideals and reflections, when Joyce moved to Paris he helped to make his Triestine friend s work known there. Svevo s novels would not have had any impact in Italy, if they hadn t been first hailed6 in France thanks to Joyce. Though living in Paris from 1920 to 1941, Joyce continued to think of Trieste as his  second country , and to use the Triestine dialect in the family because of its immediacy and onomatopoeic7 quality. It features8 prominently in Finnegans Wake, Joyce s major Parisian work. Italo Svevo. 2. Jewish: related to the religion of Judaism. 3. dispossession: depriving or being deprived of ownership. 4. neglected: ignored, not given the right attention. 5. Anatole France: French novelist, Nobel Prize winner in 1921. 6. hailed: recognized as important. 7. onomatopoeic: sounding like the thing it refers to. 8. features: appears. 26 

2  Araby Story BEFORE READING 1 All the stories in Dubliners are set in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland (Eire). What do you know about this country? Say if the following statements are true of false T F a. The island called  Ireland  is a single state, c c independent of the United Kingdom. b. c. d. e. Catholicism is the main religion in Eire. c c th St Patrick spread Christianity in Ireland in the 5 century. c c The Irish have Anglo-Saxon origins. c c Southern Ireland was under British rule until the early 1920s, when the Irish Free State was established. c c f. Irish people speak Gaelic as well as English. g. When Joyce published Dubliners, Southern Ireland was an independent state. h. The proclamation of the Republic of Ireland in 1949 put an end to its membership of the Commonwealth. 2 c c c c c c  Araby  is the name of a bazaar. Which of the following definitions of bazaar do you think is the best one in the context of Joyce s short story? c A market or area where there are a lot of small shops and stalls, especially in India or the Middle East. c A sort of fair where people sell different things to raise money for charity or a good purpose. 3 Making predictions. The title Araby evokes an exotic faraway place. Why did the author use it? Choose one option and discuss your choice with your classmates. c Because the short story is partly set in Arabia. c Because it is an adventure story and the protagonist dreams of escaping to an exotic land. c Because it is a story about adolescent love and the exotic name of the bazaar becomes part of the protagonist s daydreaming. 27 

Narrativa inglese, livello B2 intermedio, raccolta di racconti di un Joyce poco più che ventenne. Protagonisti: i dublinesi nel loro quotidiano.

Dubliners - Collana RAINBOWS

Level B2 • Intermediate - Collana RAINBOWS

Dubliners

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