Humanities Seminars Course: Joyce's Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Monday, August 3, 2015 - 9:00am to Monday, August 31, 2015 - 12:00pm
UA Poetry Center, Rubel Room 1508 E. Helen Street Tucson, AZ 85721

Taught by Professor Peter Medine, Department of English 

MONDAYS 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. August 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 2015

Tuition: $135.00

This seminar begins by putting Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist into their social and literary contexts. We will then spend two meetings on each work. Though in different genres—the short story and the education novel—they are companion pieces in significant ways. Dubliners illustrates the oppression of Irish Catholics by British Protestants and by Irish Catholics themselves through the strictures of the institutionalized Church. A Portrait tells the tale of an individual who refuses to submit to either authority, and who seeks artistic freedom to write. The seminar will explore these themes through an examination of the works' range of styles and overall narrative structures. The ultimate aim will be to understand how Dubliners and A Portrait provide a “moral history” of Ireland, and how the writer can in Joyce's words “forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race.”

Required Reading:

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Dover Thrift Editions, 1991. ISBN-10:0486268705.

---. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN-13:978-0142437346.

Please note that Professor Medine will be using the above editions and will be referring to them througout the course.

Register here.