Background Information
When conducting research on literary works, it is helpful to know as much as possible about the author and the dominate themes they write about. Biographies and literary criticisms are the types of sources that will provide readers and scholars with the author's personal history, political views, religious beliefs, and cultural customs. Reference sources can also help you narrow your topic and discover keywords for further searching.
Topics:
Choose to focus on one or more of these topics found in the Dubliners
- narcissistic behavior
- social propriety
- bourgeois
- stages of life (birth, death, rites of passage)
- poverty and class differences
- colonization & Irish politics
- defeat, powerlessness, imprisonment, paralysis
- isolation
- morality
- sexual desires
Below are library resources that will provide you with background information as well as give you some insight to the broad topics Joyce addresses in his stories.
James Joyce by Call Number: PR 6019 .O9 Z633558 2013This book is available in print and electronic formats.
Collaborative Dubliners: Joyce in Dialogue by Call Number: PR 6019 .O9 D8684 2012This book is available in print and electronic format.
James Joyce by eBook providing essential background information on James Joyce and his writings.
James Joyce A to Z by Call Number: PR 6019 .O9 Z533376 1996This book is located in the Reference area and can be used in library only.
James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner by Call Number: PR 6019 .O9 Z9744 2016This is a graphic biography of the writer, James Joyce
Rethinking Joyce's Dubliners by Call Number: PR 6019 .O9 D8776 2017This book is located in the Reference area and can be used in library only.
James Joyce in Context by Publication Date: 2009-02-12This collection of original, cohesive and concise essays charts the vital contextual backgrounds to Joyce's life and writing.
