Tag: Lecture

Lecture

13 March 2025 at 6.30pm

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to host an insightful talk about Finnegans Wake by John Dredge on Thursday, 13 March 2025 at 6.30pm as part of our Spring Lecture Series 2025.

This lecture explored how the city of Dublin and its ‘environs’ is knitted into the fabric of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. As well as the many references to Dublin and Dublin places, many of the Wake’s set pieces take place in identified and/or identifiable Dublin locales e.g. the Pranquean episode in Howth Castle and the Museyroom episode in Phoenix Park. The lecture had a strong visual dimension but also explored how everyday Dublin speech infuses the rich linguistic fusion that makes the Wake unique in world literature.

John Dredge is the Honorary Secretary of the James Joyce Institute of Ireland. A native of Dublin, John spent many years as a secondary school teacher. He subsequently, worked in curriculum development and teacher professional development. Since 2007, he has been a part-time lecturer in the School of Education of University College Dublin. Since September 2024, he hosts on behalf of the Institute an online reading of Ulysses which attracts a range of local and international participants. His immersion in the Wake continues apace.

The James Joyce Institute of Ireland was founded in Dublin in 1975 by a group of dedicated Joyceans whose mission is to foster knowledge of Joyce’s writings ‘among the ordinary people of Dublin’ in circles outside the universities. This was done through the hosting of public lectures on Joyce and his work (a role later inherited by the James Joyce Centre) and the convening of a succession of reading groups to encourage people to engage with the Joycean canon. The Institute also commemorates notable dates such as Joyce’s birthday and Bloomsday every year, as well as organising trips to places associated with Joyce and his work.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

6 March 2025 at 7.30pm

The James Joyce Centre was honoured to host reflections on North East Inner City Dublin over the century since the defenestration of Monto on Thursday, March 6th at 7.30pm.

In March 1925, the infamous prostitution trade of Monto (or “Nighttown” in the Circe episode of Ulysses) ended, suddenly and dramatically. Police flooded the area, raiding addresses. More than 120 arrests were made. At the same time, through the streets of Monto, Frank Duff Legion of Mary led a procession in honor of the Sacred Heart, reclaiming the streets.

We heard readings and remembrances by Declan Gorman, Tina Robinson, Des Gunning and Darina Gallagher. Our special guests were the former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives of Ireland Catriona Crowe and Marie Sherlock, TD of Dublin Central.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

27 February 2025 at 6.30pm

The James Joyce Centre on Thursday, February 27th at 6.30pm hosted a talk by Vincent Altman O’Connor on the possible origins of Leopold Bloom.

Richard Ellmann writes, “When Dubliners asked each other in trepidation after the book appeared, ‘Are you in it?’ or ‘Am I in it?’ the answer was hard to give. A voice sounded familiar for an instant, a name seemed to belong to a friend, then both receded into a new being.”

Joyce’s methods and models in delineating his fictional characters has become a critical obsession for many, with the endeavor reaching its zenith in Vivien Igoe’s in The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses (2016). Through years of painstaking research, she identifies the living models behind many of the fictional entities we meet in Dublin on Thursday 16th June 1904. And yet, the real-life identity of Leopold Bloom continues to challenge and haunt Joyceans to this day. Many of the contenders share personal qualities, beliefs, and aspects of a pre-Holocaust, assimilated Jewish identity with Joyce’s Jew. Yet none can be described as an Irishman whose experience as a Jew in fin de siècle Dublin was specific to that time and place.

In 2022, an Irish-Jewish model for Bloom was proposed by Neil R. Davison in An Irish-Jewish Politician: Joyce’s Dublin and Ulysses (UP Florida). The Life and Times of Albert L. Altman published by University Press of Florida. Albert Liebes Lascar Altman, a Jewish Dublin businessman and nationalist politician born in Prussian Poland, shared certain similarities with Bloom.

O’Connor, a Joycean and relative of Albert, discussed this new model within the broad frame of Cormac Ó Gráda’s (author of Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce (2006), observation that knowledge of Altman ‘opens up a whole new vista on Joyce scholarship’.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Cover photo: Albert L. Altman with family. From An Irish-Jewish Politician, Joyce’s Dublin, and Ulyssesby Neil R. Davison (UP Florida, 2022).

Lecture

7 February 2025 at 6.30pm

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to host the inaugural talk of our Spring Lecture Series 2025 on Friday, 7 February 2025 at 6.30pm.

In BloomEccles Bound! Bloom and his Northside Dublin Exile, Professor Barry Keane introduced how Leopold Bloom is out of sorts professionally, socially and personally because of his decision to reside on the Northside of Dublin, where he has found himself removed from a community culture which he perhaps had once taken for granted, having grown up and entered into marriage in the district of what used to be known as Little Jerusalem, which was on the Southside of Dublin: traditionally, albeit unfairly, thought to be the better half of the city. Indeed, it often seems the case that Bloom is treated poorly because of his loss of centredness. Not only is he the victim of prejudice for being a Jew, but also for being a Wandering Jew, in search of a return to his homeland, that being the environs of Clanbrassil Street where he was born; and indeed where Barry was born also.

A native of Dublin (Bloomsian Lombard Street West), Barry Keane is a Professor of Comparative Studies in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw. He has written widely in the fields of Classical Tradition, Irish and Scottish literature, and Polish literature, and his book publications include critical editions of the Baroque poetess Anna Stanisławska’s matrimonial saga titled Orphan Girl (New York, Toronto: Iter Press 2016, 2021, and due 2025). He has also written: Irish Drama in Poland. Staging and Reception (Bristol: Intellect 2016).

These books are available to view at https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/author/K/B/au25255687.html. Other lectures on Joyce have come with the titles: “We Can’t Change the World, but We Can Change the Subject. James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake on the Polish Stage,” and “An Unwanted Date With Destiny. James Joyce’s Ulysses and the Assassination of JFK.”

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

31 July 2024 at 7pm

The James Joyce Centre was proud to host Prof. Martin Connolly (Tsurumi University) on Wednesday, 31 July 2024 at 7pm as he posited the question, “Did Joyce borrow from Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd to write his short story ‘Eveline’? “

James Joyce discovered Thomas Hardy on the shelves of the Capel Street lending library as early as 1896 at the tender age of fourteen. It was a great thrill for the young adolescent to read books which contained matter deemed racy by many of a Victorian mindset, people like ‘Old Grogan’, the prudish librarian there. Ten years later, in Trieste, he was still avidly reading the English author, and giving his brother Stanislaus a running commentary as he did so. Joyce liked to find fault with Hardy (and with English writers in general) but in his letters it is clear that Joyce enjoyed, and quietly admired, Hardy’s works. Joyce’s oeuvre is replete with echoes of almost everything he ever read, so finding traces of the work of an author he knew so well in one of his stories, especially one of his very first stories, should come as no surprise.

At first glance, “Eveline” and Far from the Madding Crowd do not seem very comparable. One is a very short and ostensibly simple tale of a 19 year-old Dublin girl who plans to elope with a sailor against the wishes of her father. The other is a pastoral epic novel involving complex and complicated romantic interactions between four main characters played out over years. Yet the crucial dramas in both stories revolve around the disruption caused when an outsider of dubious morality woos the central female protagonist. Eveline’s ‘close shave with disgrace and ruin’ (as described by Margot Norris) could equally be applied to the trouble which the lady at the centre of Hardy’s story finds herself in.

As Prof. Connolly’s careful exegesis showed, Hardy may have meant more to Joyce and his writing than Joyce ever cared to admit.

Born in Liverpool and raised in Belfast, Prof. Martin Connolly has resided in Japan since 1991. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (BA) and Queen’s University (MA). He is a Professor of English Literature at Tsurumi University in Yokohama, Japan and teaches creative writing at Keio University. He has published on Medieval English Literature, James Joyce, and other Irish writers. He is also an active writer of poetry, short stories and novels, including Belfast, with Dinosaurs, 1979 (Shanway Press, 2022), Narrative Poems – Out of the Ordinary (Brimstone Press, 2024), and a book of original jazz photos Kind of Green (Snowchild Press, 2023).

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

23 April 2024 at 6:30pm

The James Joyce Centre was delighted to host a presentation about James Joyce’s interrogation of Ulster and partition in Finnegans Wake by Dr. Donal Manning on Tuesday, 23 April 2024 at 6:30pm.

Although Joyce is mostly associated with Dublin, there is a wealth of references to Ulster in his work, particularly in Finnegans Wake: its topography, its myth and legend, and its history. Joyce’s portrayal of Ulster is a characteristically complex amalgam of difference and inclusion. Joyce began to write the Wake, provisionally called Work in Progress, in 1923 and he published the novel in 1939. He was, therefore, ideally placed to interrogate partition and the growing pains of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. His portrait is tinged with disappointment and regret. A century after partition, and in the aftermath of Brexit, borders are again physical and symbolic markers of difference and exclusion. Joyce’s critique of intolerance and separatism is as pertinent today as when he embarked on Finnegans Wake a hundred years ago.

Dr. Donal Manning completed his PhD at Liverpool University. His thesis was on Ulster and unionism in Finnegans Wake. He has presented peer-reviewed papers on Finnegans Wake at conferences of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures at University of Cork (2018), University of Nijmegen, Netherlands (2018), and Trinity College Dublin (2019) and delivered three courses on Joyce’s fiction (two of which covered Finnegans Wake) at the Continuing Education Department, Liverpool University. His book Finnegans Wake, Ulster and Partition: The Sanguine Boundary Limit was published last year by Cork University Press. It can be purchased via this link: https://www.corkuniversitypress.com/9781782055877/finnegans-wake-ulster-and-partition/

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

19 April 2024 at 7:30pm

The James Joyce Centre hosted a special lecture and reading by famed Joycean Dr. James Keeley on Friday, 19 April 2024 at 7:30pm.

James presented his experiences of reading and studying Finnegans Wake over the years. In particular, he paid close attention to the enigmatic character of the “Prankquean.” He is a pioneer in reading the works of James Joyce on Skype and a long-standing contributor to the Sweny Pharmacy’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Reading Groups. For five years, he was the moderator of the Transatlantic James Joyce Reading Group, including the Finnegans Wake Sunday School, involving readers from New York to Dublin. He is a co-founder of the Joyceborough Finnegans Wake Reading Group.

Jim was conferred with a PhD in English and Comparative Literature by Columbia University in 2002. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Lecture

11 March 2024 at 7pm

Tá an áthas orainn cuireadh a thabhart duit chuig léacht leis tOllamh Ray Cashman, ar an Luan, 11 Márta, ag 7.00 PM, sa James Joyce Centre ar Sraid Sheoirse Thua.

An Cumann Le Béaloideas éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society and the James Joyce Centre were delighted to host a presentation by the distinguished folklore scholar, Professor Ray Cashman (University of Indiana, Bloomington), at the James Joyce Centre on Monday, 11 March 2024 at 7pm. This was a rare opportunity to hear the internationally renowned folklore scholar give a presentation in Dublin about Irish folklore and an Gorta Mór.

“Luck’s Pennies, Butter Witches, and the Hungry Grass: Community in a World of Limited Good”

Many examples of Irish folklore reflect and instill enduring conceptions about the workings, vulnerability, and viability of community, a project in need of continual maintenance. Arguably, there has been no more devastating blow to the vernacular understanding of community than the mid-nineteenth-century Famine. If folklore provides models for contemplating and reproducing ideas about how community may be enacted, it also bears witness to the haunting consequences of abandoning this social contract for mutual support.

Professor Ray Cashman is director of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. He is currently Visiting Professor at NUI Galway.

Professor Cashman has carried out extensive folklore and ethnological research in Ireland. His books include Packy Jim: Folklore and Worldview on the Irish Border (2017) and Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community (2011), and many articles. The numerous awards he has received for his work include the Michael J Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture and the Donald Murphy Award for Distinguished First Book, both of which were awarded by the American Association for Irish Studies, and the Chicago Folklore Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.

The James Joyce Centre is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.