Aim: How do the passages formed around Mrs. Mooney’s voice differ from those formed around Mr. Doran’s? Do we ever hear Polly’s voice?

Procedures

Activity #1: Read “The Boarding House” by James Joyce. Mark any phrases, if you notice them, that you think might be written in free indirect discourse.

Homework Exercise (same as for “Clay”)

Analyze a character through the narration in one or two paragraphs (about half a page of text total).

· Circle the words in the passage that cause you to hear the character’s voice through the narration.

· Re-write the paragraph, without those words so that the language is no longer characteristic of the character.

· Write a few sentences stating what you have learned about the character that the text does not explicitly tell you. Use at least one example from your paragraph.

Read:

1. Dubliners (1914)- the early stories: ‘He mystified Curran by informing him, “I am writing a series of epicleti - ten - for a paper. I have written one. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city.” The word epiclesis (Latin) or epicleseis (Greek), referred to an invocation still found in the mass of the Eastern church, but dropped from the Roman ritual, in which the Holy Ghost is besought to transform the host into the body and blood of Christ. What Joyce meant by the term, adapted like epiphany and eucharistic moment from ritual, he suggested to his brother Stanislaus: “Don’t you think there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do? I man that I am trying [...] to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own ... for their mental, moral, and spiritual uplift.” [... &c.].’ (James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.169.)

2. “Joyce’s Dubliners as Epiphanies” http://www.joycean.org/index.php?p=33

Discuss:

· How can you characterize Mrs. Mooney’s ‘voice’? Mr. Doran’s? Polly’s?

· How do they differ?

· What do you learn about the different characters?

· What is the moral of the story?

· Do you have an easier or a harder time thinking about the moral with the characters’ voices in your head?

· What can you say about the theme of the story?