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Other Readings and Media

Joyce, J.: Dubliners

Description

James Joyce?s Dubliners (1914) is a collection of short stories about his native city. Joyce helps invent the modern short story as he tries to evoke the mood or spirit of Dublin as it manifests itself in the behavior of the Dublin men and women. When Joyce wrote, Ireland was still ruled from London both politically and culturally. Joyce?s book is a declaration of cultural independence, as he makes his subject matter the muted lives of middle-class Dubliners. In these stories he studies the social tapestry of Dublin, portraying his characters as protagonists of their own dramas, but at the same time shaped by their environment and so part of the larger Dublin story.