Dubliners (Collins Classics)

Description

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.' Revealing the truths and realities about Irish society in the early 20th century, Joyce's Dubliners challenged the prevailing image of Dublin at the time. A group portrait made up of 15 short stories about the inhabitants of Joyce's native city, he offers a subtle critique of his own town, imbuing the text with an underlying tone of tragedy. Through his various characters he displays the complicated relationships, hardships and mundane details of everyday life and the desire for escape - a yearning that so closely mirrored his own experiences.

Irish novelist and poet James Joyce is widely recognized as one of the greatest writers of the modernist avant-garde period, although this recognition did not come until long after his death. In writings such as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and his classic Ulysses, Joyce experimented with the use of language, extensively employed techniques like stream-of-consciousness and inner monologue, and pushed the boundaries of propriety with his explicit content. James Joyce died on January 13, 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland.

"In "Dubliners", Joyce's first attempt to register in language and fictive form the protean complexities of the 'reality of experience, ' he learns the paradoxical lesson that only through the most rigorous economy, only by concentrating on the minutest of particulars, can he have any hope of engaging with the immensity of the world."-from the Introduction "Joyce renews our apprehension of reality, strengthens our sympathy with our fellow creatures, and leaves us in awe before the mystery of created things." -"Atlantic Monthly " "It is in the prose of "Dubliners" that we first hear the authentic rhythms of Joyce the poet..."Dubliners" is, in a very real sense, the foundation of Joyce's art. In shaping its stories, he developed that mastery of naturalistic detail and symbolic design which is the hallmark of his mature fiction." -Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz, authors of "Dubliners: Text and Criticism" With an Introduction by John Kelly