Bloomsday Festival 2024

6 June 2024 at 6:30pm at the Instituto Cervantes Dublín

The James Joyce Centre and Instituto Cervantes Dublín was proud to present Rosa Chacel and James Joyce: A Portrait of a Joycean Artist with Mónica Galindo González on 6 June 2024 at 6:30pm. The event was held at Instituto Cervantes Dublín on Lincoln House, 6-16 Lincoln Place, Dublin 2.

This year is the centenary of Spain’s first publication regarding the work of James Joyce, which was a review by Antonio Marichalar about the upcoming Spanish translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Even though the translation was officially published in 1926, some writers were fortunate to get an early copy of the novel and explore its contents. One of these writers was Rosa Chacel, who immediately fell in love with Joyce’s novel and started to experiment with his techniques.

Rosa Chacel (1898 – 1994) is a writer part of the “Generation of ’27” and the Sinsombrero thanks to her participation in the intellectual and cultural milieu of the 20th-century Spain. Due to the close relationship between her life and her writings, her literary innovations made her a nonconformist and subversive writer, always concerned about her style and trajectory. One of her main influences was the writings of James Joyce, which made her recognise that her work is part of “el mundo Joyce” (Joyce’s world).

Joycean scholar Mónica Galindo González guided the audience through Rosa Chacel’s work and its Joycean connections. After a reading of texts by both writers, the event was followed by a Q&A section.

Mónica Galindo González is one of the assistants at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin and a language tutor at University College Dublin. During her Erasmus in Birmingham, she decided to explore Dublin. Her first visit to the James Joyce Centre in 2019 was so inspiring that it gave her the idea to research Joycean traits in the work of Spanish writers for her bachelor’s dissertation. Her passion for James Joyce and the work of Rosa Chacel allowed her to continue this project and bring it to University College Dublin, where she recently submitted a research masters dissertation on the same topic. Mónica has also presented papers in three international conferences in Joyce Studies. In June of this year, she will be presenting a paper at the International Joyce Symposium in Glasglow about the symbol of paralysis in Spain and Ireland.

The Bloomsday Festival is organised by the James Joyce Centre in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.