Category Archives: June 11

Literary Identity

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Randall has already written about the importance of Easter Rising members in contemporary Dublin, and I am going to leapfrog off of his idea.  While walking around Dublin yesterday and interacting with people, what really strjoyce statueuck me was how much literature, especially Joyce and Yeats, means to Dubliners and how intrinsic it is in Irish identity.  The Dubliners walking tour was really interesting and enjoyable, despite the rain.  And perhaps it gave me a skewed view of how much the average person likes Joyce, but I don’t think so.  I thought it was really interesting how many of the members of our tour were Irish.  I expected that it would mostly be a tourist attraction, but it wasn’t.  Later we went to O’Connell street where we saw the James Joyce statue.  This showed that in Ireland, Joyce is not a niche enjoyment for one small group on a walker tour but that his writing is important to the general public and the city.  Finally, last night while we were out, it was very refreshing to talk to locals and see how interested they were in literature.  At home, I often have the same discussion about my academic program.

Me: I’m getting my PhD

Other: Oh wow!  That’s great! What are you getting it in?

Me: English Literature! I’m really excited.

Other: [eyes glaze over] Oh. [deflated.] What to plan to do with that?

There is very little literary culture in contemporary America.  Ask an American who the literary icon of the nation is, and what answer will you receive?  Mark Twain, maybe?  Whatever i
t is, one is not likely to get a lot of enthusiasm.  Here, in contrast, when I tell someone that I am studying literature they respond, “Oh! Great! Joyce! Yeats!”  In the short time we have been here, I have already had more conversations about national liteulysses wallrature that I do in a month at home.  To me, this speaks to the importance of these writers and their influence on the life of the average Irishperson.  We have talked about how the Easter Rising was the “poets’ rebellion,” but it hadn’t really hit home.  Seeing how important the literature is to the culture here shows me that
here it was a significant source for change – something that literature should often strive to do.

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I don’t have a set “home” location.  I have the place I was raised, I have the place where I found solitude, and the place where I know I can thrive, but none of these places are anywhere near each other.  The place that I would say that I am most comfortable is a place where I will have to settle for less if I want a job, but the places where I know that I can achieve success in the financial sphere, but I am not confident that I will ever feel comfortable there.  I am young, so I know that I will make the best of my situation and that I will likely grow to refine my personal “home,” but it is odd to have to make that choice now.

I also lack what Ulysses praises in the photo: a sence of country.  Wyoming, on its own, is fairly anti-people so mass patriotism like what exists in the South isn’t something that I was really exposed to as a kid.  I also had the kind of odd conundrum of learning about early colonization in America around the same time that my grandmother was getting married to a Native American man who had marched with Native rights groups and had faced persecution by his government because of his race.  It was hard for me to feel like an American, when at an early age I had already felt betrayed by my country.

The James Joyce Experience

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The James Joyce Centre was my favorite part of the Joyce tour we attended yesterday. Not only was the building full of information that mapped out his life and literary works, but the place itself was extremely interesting to me. The museum aprepared to be an old house converted into a public space and I think this type of setting helped create a more intimate feel versus using a more commercial place. The house rested amongst other identical houses in a quiet neighborhood Joyce lived near during his time in Dublin. The front doors were all different colors which I have noticed is a popular style of house in the city of Dublin, especially for older buildings. Bright green ivy climbed up the walls on the outside of the brick houses and it felt as though you had walked into a slice of Ireland in the early 1900s. Once upstairs you could really admire the intense architecture this old house possessed literally from floor to ceiling. The old floors creaked with every step, the doors were solid and heavy, slamming shut with a loud bang if you were not careful when you closed them. The ceilings were intricately designed and best of all the house was still in very good condition while still maintaining its original style. The best view of this entire house happened when you glanced out the window from the second floor. Freshly rained on flowers framed the window where you could see the green ivy pop against the red brick. Despite the dreary weather everything appeared fresh and bright from this place. #dubbelgsu

 

#dubbelgsu

Walking in Joyce’s Footsteps

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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.

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We found him!

We found him!

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Jonathan and the Dubliners Walking Tour

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To study James Joyce is largely to study place. Especially in Dubliners, his first book-length publication, Joyce draws his reader into the cultural place of Irish identity. Today, we went on a walking tour around Dublin city to see the locations that Joyce includes in his work. Jonathan led our tour. He’s a young man, maybe mid-thirties, and teaches at Trinity here in Dublin. He carries a cheap, old copy of Dubliners. Pages are marked, and slips of paper are taped to blank pages at the beginnings and ends of chapters. He’s obviously been studying Joyce for years. He tells us stories of Joyce’s childhood, connecting the narrative of Dubliners to the biography of its author through concepts of place.

We stand in a circle, attentive to the words of our guide, trying to imagine how Joyce wold have understood the place of his childhood. We looks towards the end of the street, a place presumably from one of his stories, and consider the biographical implications of that place on Joyce’s text. We end at the Gresham Hotel. Jonathan talks with us about the conclusion of “The Dead.” We contemplate the westward gaze of its characters and the Irish people during Joyce’s day, trying to understand the cultural place that Joyce’s Dubliners would offer the Irish people. Joyce was more interested in the present and future, while so many of his contemporaries (especially those of the Irish literary revival) were concerned with the past. Joyce wanted Ireland to become active players in all facets of the global experience. We walk towards the General Post Office. The rain falls harder. We looks around the busy city street. I consider the connections and disconnections of Joyce’s 1914 Dubliners and Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising.

 

Jonathan and Joyce                                       GPO

James and Edith

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Today was all about James Joyce. We started by discussing parts of Dubliners in our class meeting this morning, then went straight to a walking tour to see important places both from his personal life and for the characters in his works. Before the tour started, we got to walk around the James Joyce Centre. After walking through the halls and seeing several photos and fun facts about Joyce and his work, I went outside to see the mural and door knocker from Number 7 Eccles Street. The mural was by far my favorite thing I saw all day. It was filled with paintings and quotes from Ulysses with all different colors and styles of art. I took a ton of pictures of individual quotes. I spent probably fifteen minutes trying to see every square inch of it because I thought it was so incredible.

After the tour, we went to Ireland’s Smallest Pub, where I met a lady named Edith from the US. She told me she was a speech therapist, and had been so overwhelmed by the year she just had that she up and bought tickets to London. She spent some time there, is here in Dublin now, then is planning on going to Barcelona. She was sitting at the bar alone and was having the time of her life talking to people and laughing. I had so much fun laughing with her. One of my favorite parts of this trip is all of the people I get to meet. I never know who I am going to sit next to or where they’ll be from.

The Buskering Child

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While walking toward Trinity campus and The Pig’s Ear restaurant yesterday, my study abroad group came upon a Guitar playing busker. He was quite good, and there was a large crowd gathered around. We were on a major pedestrian thoroughfare that I had visited often to shop at while on my undergraduate Dublin abroad, and hearing his playing reminded me of that previous time in this place. Though I could not remember the street’s name, I knew that I had heard buskers before, though perhaps none had been as talented as this guitar player.

 

The busker’s skill was not what had gathered the crowd around him, though. A young child with a cherry red plastic guitar was standing a few feet from him, legs splayed, leaning over the guitar to seethe strings and plucking at them with obvious joy. This scene was, of course, picturesque in the extreme and, even if it was fabricated, I was struck by it.

 

This blond headed child was living an experience of early childhood joy. Whether he was playing that red guitar with the busker in a moment of circumstance or had been brought to that street to draw in crowds for the busker,  this moment, or those like it, would form a foundation for his development over the course of the rest of his life.  It is a unique experience–and one enabled by the individual qualities of Dublin–and, were I to have traveled all this way just to have observed this moment in a miscellaneous child’s life, the trip would be worthwhile.