Because I have an active visual imagination, I create vivid scenarios and settings in my mind when I read. Even if I have visited the location of the narrative, I continually reshape and shape my idea of the setting. On the James Joyce walking tour, I enjoyed when our guide read a snippet of the Dubliners in the place where it physically occurred (or the place where Joyce meant for the scenario to occur).  I found myself standing in these places and listening to the guide read while I reconstructed my physical surroundings- imagining the place as if the story were happening around me. Not only did I project the story onto these places, but the physical places also reshaped previous mental images. When I first read “The Dead,” I created a fictive place in my mind where the story ends. My original concept of the place changed when the guide led us to the Gresham Hotel, the actual setting for the end of “The Dead.” This reordering of my imaginary place based on the physical place of the fictive story shows the volatility and complexity in the concept of place. If I have a chance to reread “The Dead” in the future, I’m sure that my memory of the physical place will alter again.

Another aspect of the tour and the Joyce museum that I enjoyed was seeing the small table where Joyce collaborated with his researchers to complete Finnegan’s Wake. The amount of research that Joyce put into his works was incredible and to see the round table and his small room where these works were imagined was a powerful experience.

We found him!