James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His masterpiece Ulysses has been hailed as the most important novel in English literature and many of Joyce's landmarks can still be visited today.
Joycean Dublin
Joyce was fascinated by Dublin and its people, once remarking that he was "more interested in the street names of Dublin than the riddles of the universe". Joyce's novels; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake were all set in the Dublin of his childhood, as was the collection of short stories The Dubliners.
Despite the banning of Ulysses in Britain and America during the 1920's and the burning of every first edition of The Dubliners in Ireland, Joyce continued to find joy in Dublin and its people. Joyce eventually left Dublin and settled in Switzerland and Paris but always looked to his home town for inspiration in his writing; "I know when I was writing Ulysses I tried to give the color and tone of Dublin with my words; the drab, yet glistening atmosphere of Dublin, its hallucinatory vapors, its tattered confusion, the atmosphere of its bars, its social immobility".
The Martello Tower in SandycoveBuilt in 1804 as a defense against the threat of Napoleonic invasion, the Martello Tower in Sandycove has become a regular attraction for visitors interested in everything "Joycean". The opening chapter of Ulysses is set here, with the protagonists Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan the two tenants. The fictional account is based, like most of Joyce's work, on real events. Joyce moved in to the tower on September 9th, 1904 with Oliver St John Gogarty and Samuel Chenevix. Staying in the tower for only 6 days, Joyce left after a heavy drinking session that ended with Gogarty (Mulligan in Ulysses) firing a revolver at Joyce and narrowly missing. The tower became the Joyce Tower Museum in 1962 and was opened by the publishing house that first printed Ulysses in Paris in 1922. The museum is devoted to the life and works of Joyce with letters, photographs, and rare editions of his work. The museum is open April-September.
The James Joyce Centre
Dublin's own James Joyce Centre holds exhibitions, reading workshops, lectures and walking tours of Joyce's Dublin following in the footsteps of characters from The Dubliners and Ulysses. Visitors can easily trace many of the landmarks mentioned in Joyce's fiction themselves, most of which still stand today. Davy Byrne's pub is a particular favorite at 21 Duke Street, where Bloom stops for a cheese sandwich and glass of wine in Ulysses. The centre also has a library dedicated to the works of Joyce, the front door of 7 Eccles Street (the fictional home of Leopold Bloom) and Joyce's death mask cast by the sculptor Paul Speck. See Joyce's Dublin a Walking Guide To Ulysses by Jack McCarthy 1986 Wolfhound Press.
 |
