James Joyce

1882-1941

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

Joyce met Nora Barnacle

on June 16, 1904 and

soon thereafter left with

her for Italy, where they

stayed until World War I

broke out. They moved

from there to Zurich and

later to Paris.

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

Dubliners is a short story

collection consisting of 15

stories, spanning

childhood, adolescence,

adulthood, and public life.

Joyce believed that his

stories constituted a “a

chapter of the moral

history of my country.”

The stories were written

between 1903 and 1907,

but Joyce had difficulty

bringing the volume out

because the publishers he

sent it to felt that some of

the stories contained

“inappropriate” elements.

The main issue was that

Joyce’s “nicely polished

looking-glass” revealed

the negative side of “dear

dirty Dublin.”

Dubliners was published in 1914

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

First UK edition, published by The Egoist1917. First US edition, 1916.

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo ....

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where

Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. --O, the wild rose blossoms --On the little green place. He sang that song. That was his song. --O, the green wothe botheth.

Joyce, Portrait

Bray, Ireland, just south of Dublin, where Portrait opens

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body;

and, when thebell rang for study and the

lines filed out of the playrooms, he felt

the cold air of the corridor and staircase inside his

clothes. Hestill tried to think what was

the right answer. Was it right to kiss

his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that

mean, to kiss?You put your face up like that to say goodnight and

then his motherput her face down. That was

to kiss. His mother put her lips on his

cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek;

and they made atiny little noise: kiss. Why

did people do that with their two faces?

Joyce, Portrait

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91)

Leader of Irish Parliamentary Party

Stephen Dedalus early on mourns the death of Parnell. In the Christmas dinner scene, his father Simon and family friend John Casey defend him against Dante, whose point of view would have been common among devote Irish Catholics. The following on Parnell is a paraphrase of passages in John O’Beirne Ranelagh’s, A Short History of Ireland (134-47).

Charles Stewart Parnell, was a Protestant landlord and High Sheriff of Wicklow, and had an American mother (like De Valera after him). As leader of Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain in 1877; by 1880, after Isaac Butt’s death, Parnell became leader of Irish Parliamentary Party.

He became president of the Irish National Land League, founded by Michael Davitt, whose “Land League rapidly became a mass political and social movement, guaranteeing Parnell’s irish party faithful support while Parnell campaigned for land reform.” (134-5) The Land League tested the British government’s willingness to continue supporting the Anglo-Irish (Protestant) Ascendancy class as landlords – and this at time of severe agricultural recession and asymmetrical relations between those who owned and those who worked the land.

Parnell speaking at land league meeting (1881).

Behind him are J.G. Biggar, T. Sexton, J.W. Sullivan, Patrick Egan, T. M. Healy.

Land War (1876 and following years): The issues were thus fair rents and redistribution of land. Actions included withholding rent, boycotts (here’s where the term originates), and violence against landlords. Land Law bills in 1881. T. M. Healy’s Plan of Campaign of the late 1880s was another attempt to fight for fair rents; came to an end because of its “violent methods.”

Richard Pigott and the forged letters of 1886, accusing Parnell of condoning the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Phoenix Park (Dublin) in 1882, by IRB breakaway group, Irish National Invincibles. Despite attempts to unseat him, Parnell led the Irish Parliamentary Party well through the 1880s, though there was some disappointment that the British Prime Minister Gladstone did not pass Home Rule for Ireland.

Kitty O’Shea and the fall of Parnell, 1890. Conservative Party, non-conformists and the Catholic Church all denounced him. He refused to step down. Anti-Parnellite MPs form alliance with Liberal Party to save Home Rule. T. M. Healy instrumental in deposing Parnel from IPP leadership. Married O’Shea in May and died shortly thereafter, in October 1891

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

By chapter 2, the Dedalus’s are in Blackrock, nearer the city.

Dublin was a new and complex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at most, going half way down one of the side streets: but when he had made a skeleton map of the city in his mind he followed boldly one of its central lines until he reacheeached the customhouse.

Joyce, Portrait

““Manly little chap!”Manly little chap!”

Stephen . . . recalled his own equivocal position in Belvedere, a free boy, a leader afraid of his own authority, proud and sensitive and suspicious, battling against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his mind. The letters cut in the stained wood of the desk stared upon him, mocking his bodily weakness and futile enthusiasms and making him loathe himself for his own mad and filthy orgies. The spittle in his throat grew bitter and foul to swallow and the faint sickness climbed to his brain so that for a moment he closed his eyes and walked on in darkness. He could still hear his father's voice . . . “When you kick out for yourself, Stephen - as I daresay you will one of those days - remember, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen. We kept the ball rolling anyhow and enjoyed ourselves and saw a bit of life and we were none the worse of it either. But we were all gentlemen, Stephen - at least I hope we were - and bloody good honest Irishmen too.

Joyce, Portrait

Cork, Ireland Belvedere College,Dublin