Product Description

Dubliners is arguably the best-known and most influential collection of short stories written in English, and has been since its publication in 1914. Through what Joyce described as their "style of scrupulous meanness," the stories present a direct, sometimes searing view of Dublin in the early twentieth century. The text of this Norton Critical Edition is based on renowned Joyce scholar Hans Walter Gabler’s edited text and includes his editorial notes and the introduction to his scholarly edition, which details and discusses Dubliners’ complicated publication history. "Contexts" offers a rich collection of materials that bring the stories and the Irish capital to life for twenty-first century readers, including photographs, newspaper articles and advertising, early versions of two of the stories, and a satirical poem by Joyce about his publication woes. "Criticism" brings together eight illuminating essays on the most frequently taught stories in Dubliners—"Araby," "Eveline," "After the Race," "The Boarding House," "Counterpoints," "A Painful Case," and "The Dead." Contributors include David G. Wright, Heyward Ehrlich, Margot Norris, James Fairhall, Fritz Senn, Morris Beja, Roberta Jackson, and Vincent J. Cheng. 8 maps; 20 illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50821 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 412 pages

About the Author
Margot Norris is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of four books on the works of James Joyce: The Decentered Universe of ’Finnegan’s Wake’, Joyce’s Web: The Social Unraveling of Modernism, Suspicious Readings of Joyce’s ’Dubliners,’ and Ulysses, a study of the 1967 Joseph Strick film on the novel.

Customer Reviews

Not just "An Original," but "THE Original"
This is the old father, the old artificer, of all 20th century short stories. Each story is a gem, and together they tell like a rosary. "The Dead," is by itself a masterpiece which resonates long after you've finished it. Dubliners is Joyce's most accessible work, readable and enjoyable without losing any of its deeper nuances.

Perfection
There is rare art that is perfect -- unintentionally and unconsciously perfect (there is no other way to do it). If you like music, think of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites or a late Mozart piano concerto -- alter a single phrase, change a line or a breath of it, and the whole is belittled, even ruined. Joyce's stories are of this kind of art. It is where, as Keats would remind us, truth and beauty are one, timeless, and sufficient. Human art can achieve no greater purity than this. I read "The Dead" every year at Christmas (well, it is a Christmas story, after all), and every year my eyes stream like Gabriel's before the softly falling snow, Michael Furey's living song, and the opening of the great mystery.

Classic
What can I say? This classical work is very accessible and I recommend it if you liked 'A Portrait'.
It is written so that you can almost touch, smell, hear the disconcerting atmosphere lingering in every corner of Dublin's houses.