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James Joyce's Dubliners
-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature
-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
11 people are currently reading
227 people want to read
About the author
Harold Bloom
1,702 books2,059 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 6, 2018
As I get older, I find myself less and less attracted to fiction, and my mind did wander as I read some of these stories. But I have to say that the final story, "The Dead," lives up to its reputation, and then some. It is one of the most moving stories I have ever read, and it seems to say everything there is to say in its sixty-four pages.
February 15, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing (and rereading on occasion) all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review, back when I read them.
This section brings together a curated collection of reflections on readings—part memoir, part critical appraisal. It encompasses works that have profoundly influenced my intellectual development, those that have offered enduring pleasure, and others that have invited disagreement or critique.
To return to Harold Bloom is to return to a voice that refused to be anything but singular. In an age increasingly governed by critical fashions and theoretical orthodoxies, Bloom wrote as though literature were still a matter of awe, struggle, and inward illumination. From the eruptive brilliance of ‘The Anxiety of Influence’ to the cathedral-like architecture of ‘The Western Canon’, he restored to criticism a prophetic cadence—half scholarship, half incantation. He believed that reading was not method but encounter, not system but destiny, and that great books survive because they remake the minds that dare to love them.
My own encounter with Bloom began not in libraries but in classrooms shaped by generosity. In my student years, my English teachers—Biswajit Chatterjee, Ratna Srinivas, and Mr. John Mason—placed Bloom before me almost as a rite of passage.
What began as guidance slowly deepened into companionship. Over time, Bloom ceased to be merely a critic on a shelf and became a presence: a stern mentor, a quarrelsome friend, a mind that argued even in silence. These reflections are then not only readings but offerings—acts of gratitude to a master who taught me how to read, and to the teachers who first lit that lamp.
I was introduced to the mind of James Joyce in 1999. I remember the year not because of any global event, but because of the interior shift it produced. That was the year I first encountered the dense, deliberate architecture of his sentences—the way they seemed at once ordinary and tectonic, rooted in the cobbled streets of Dublin yet vibrating with metaphysical unease.
And in that same year, I found an unlikely guide: ‘James Joyce's Dubliners’ by Bloom. After Bloom, Joyce was no longer an enigma. He was a territory I could enter.
The phrase sounds almost arrogant now—“Joyce was no problem after that”—but what I mean is this: Bloom demystified the fear without diminishing the difficulty. He did not simplify Joyce; he clarified him. Before Bloom, I approached ‘‘Dubliners’’ with a kind of anticipatory anxiety. Joyce had already acquired a reputation in my mind as forbidding, obscure, and modernist in the most intimidating sense. His name hovered like a warning sign. Bloom, however, treated him not as a monument but as a craftsman—precise, ironic, attentive to paralysis and epiphany.
Reading Bloom on ‘Dubliners’ was like being handed a lantern before entering a dim cathedral. The shadows remained, but they were no longer hostile.
What Bloom does in this study is deceptively simple: he reads closely, almost stubbornly so. He lingers over phrases, tonal shifts, and patterns of imagery. He insists on the emotional undercurrents of stories that, on the surface, appear uneventful. In doing so, he reveals the radical subtlety of Joyce’s art. The famous concept of the “epiphany”—that sudden spiritual manifestation in the midst of the mundane—becomes less a critical cliché and more an experiential reality.
Take “Araby.” Before Bloom, I read it as a poignant story of adolescent disappointment. After Bloom, I began to sense its deeper ironies—the fusion of romantic idealism and colonial stagnation, the boy’s self-dramatization undercut by the drabness of the bazaar. Bloom draws attention to the tonal modulation in the final paragraph, the self-lacerating clarity that dawns upon the narrator. That moment—“Gazing up into the darkness…”—transforms from a mere ending into a revelation about self-consciousness itself.
Bloom’s great strength lies in his refusal to reduce literature to sociology, even while acknowledging context. He recognises Dublin’s paralysis—the moral and political inertia that Joyce anatomises—but he does not allow the stories to collapse into documentary. Instead, he foregrounds what he calls aesthetic power: the shaping intelligence behind the narrative restraint.
In 1999, I needed that lesson.
I was still forming my reading habits, oscillating between impressionistic responses and the newly acquired vocabulary of theory. Bloom’s method offered a third way: rigorous yet intimate. He modelled a criticism that was personal without being indulgent. His voice in the book is assured, occasionally imperious, but always anchored in the text itself.
Most illuminating for me was Bloom’s treatment of “The Dead.” Even before I fully grasped its critical reputation, I sensed its gravity. Bloom articulates why the story feels like a culmination—not only of ‘Dubliners’ but of a certain modern consciousness. He traces Gabriel Conroy’s journey from social self-satisfaction to existential humility, emphasising the snowfall as both literal and symbolic.
Under Bloom’s guidance, the famous closing image of snow falling “upon all the living and the dead” becomes less a poetic flourish and more a metaphysical levelling.
What struck me most was Bloom’s insistence on Joyce’s generosity. It is easy to read Joyce as cold, as clinically detached from his characters. Bloom counters this by highlighting the compassion embedded in the irony. The paralysis Joyce depicts is not merely condemned; it is mourned. That interpretive nuance changed my relationship with the text. I began to see Joyce not as an aloof modernist dismantling his homeland, but as a deeply ambivalent observer—critical yet tethered by memory.
There is, of course, a paradox in encountering Joyce through Bloom. Bloom is himself a formidable presence, with strong preferences and an unmistakable critical temperament.
One risks reading Joyce as Bloom’s Joyce. And yet, in my case, that mediation was enabling rather than constraining. Bloom’s confidence disarmed my intimidation. He made it permissible to struggle with the text, to reread, to dwell in ambiguity.
After Bloom, I returned to ‘Dubliners’ alone. And the stories opened.
I began to notice the choreography of repetition: the recurring motifs of windows, lamps, music. I sensed the careful progression from childhood to public life, from private fantasies to communal rituals. The collection revealed itself as a mosaic of arrested motion. Bloom had pointed out the architecture; I could now wander within it.
Perhaps the most lasting impact of Bloom’s study was its implicit argument about difficulty. Joyce’s prose, at least in ‘Dubliners’, is not difficult because it is obscure. It is difficult because it is exact. The emotional calibrations are fine-tuned; the ironies are delicate. Bloom teaches the reader to slow down, to resist paraphrase. In doing so, he restores the dignity of attention.
Looking back, I realize that 1999 marked not just my introduction to Joyce, but my initiation into serious literary reading. Bloom functioned as a bridge between admiration and understanding. He showed me that great literature rewards patience, that interpretive labor is not an obstacle but a form of intimacy.
There are moments in Bloom’s book where his evaluative instincts surface—his placement of Joyce within a hierarchy of Western genius. At the time, I accepted these judgements almost reverentially. Later, I would question the rigidity of such canons.
But even in dissent, I retained something of Bloom’s fervour. He writes about Joyce as if the stakes are existential. That intensity is contagious.
What remains with me most vividly is the sense of demystification without diminishment. Bloom does not strip Joyce of complexity; he reveals the craft behind it. He reminds us that even the most intimidating writers are, at base, makers of sentences—arrangers of words striving for resonance.
When I say, “Joyce was no problem after that,” I mean that the aura of inaccessibility dissolved. The work still demanded effort, but it no longer felt adversarial. Bloom had reframed the challenge as an invitation.
In the years since, I have revisited Joyce without Bloom’s mediation. I have read other critics, encountered competing interpretations, engaged with theoretical lenses Bloom himself might have resisted. Yet that first encounter remains foundational. It taught me that guidance need not be dogmatic; it can be liberating.
Bloom’s study of ‘Dubliners’ may not be his most famous work, but for me, it was transformative. It turned apprehension into curiosity and reverence into engagement. It taught me that criticism, at its best, is an act of accompaniment—a walking beside rather than a speaking over.
1999 now feels distant, almost archival. But when I open ‘Dubliners’, I can still sense the echo of that first guided reading. The streets of Dublin no longer intimidate. They beckon. And somewhere in the background, Bloom’s voice reminds me to read slowly, to trust the sentence, to honour the epiphany.
Joyce remains complex. He remains inexhaustible. But he is no longer forbidding.
He is, instead, a companion.
A must-read.
This section brings together a curated collection of reflections on readings—part memoir, part critical appraisal. It encompasses works that have profoundly influenced my intellectual development, those that have offered enduring pleasure, and others that have invited disagreement or critique.
To return to Harold Bloom is to return to a voice that refused to be anything but singular. In an age increasingly governed by critical fashions and theoretical orthodoxies, Bloom wrote as though literature were still a matter of awe, struggle, and inward illumination. From the eruptive brilliance of ‘The Anxiety of Influence’ to the cathedral-like architecture of ‘The Western Canon’, he restored to criticism a prophetic cadence—half scholarship, half incantation. He believed that reading was not method but encounter, not system but destiny, and that great books survive because they remake the minds that dare to love them.
My own encounter with Bloom began not in libraries but in classrooms shaped by generosity. In my student years, my English teachers—Biswajit Chatterjee, Ratna Srinivas, and Mr. John Mason—placed Bloom before me almost as a rite of passage.
What began as guidance slowly deepened into companionship. Over time, Bloom ceased to be merely a critic on a shelf and became a presence: a stern mentor, a quarrelsome friend, a mind that argued even in silence. These reflections are then not only readings but offerings—acts of gratitude to a master who taught me how to read, and to the teachers who first lit that lamp.
I was introduced to the mind of James Joyce in 1999. I remember the year not because of any global event, but because of the interior shift it produced. That was the year I first encountered the dense, deliberate architecture of his sentences—the way they seemed at once ordinary and tectonic, rooted in the cobbled streets of Dublin yet vibrating with metaphysical unease.
And in that same year, I found an unlikely guide: ‘James Joyce's Dubliners’ by Bloom. After Bloom, Joyce was no longer an enigma. He was a territory I could enter.
The phrase sounds almost arrogant now—“Joyce was no problem after that”—but what I mean is this: Bloom demystified the fear without diminishing the difficulty. He did not simplify Joyce; he clarified him. Before Bloom, I approached ‘‘Dubliners’’ with a kind of anticipatory anxiety. Joyce had already acquired a reputation in my mind as forbidding, obscure, and modernist in the most intimidating sense. His name hovered like a warning sign. Bloom, however, treated him not as a monument but as a craftsman—precise, ironic, attentive to paralysis and epiphany.
Reading Bloom on ‘Dubliners’ was like being handed a lantern before entering a dim cathedral. The shadows remained, but they were no longer hostile.
What Bloom does in this study is deceptively simple: he reads closely, almost stubbornly so. He lingers over phrases, tonal shifts, and patterns of imagery. He insists on the emotional undercurrents of stories that, on the surface, appear uneventful. In doing so, he reveals the radical subtlety of Joyce’s art. The famous concept of the “epiphany”—that sudden spiritual manifestation in the midst of the mundane—becomes less a critical cliché and more an experiential reality.
Take “Araby.” Before Bloom, I read it as a poignant story of adolescent disappointment. After Bloom, I began to sense its deeper ironies—the fusion of romantic idealism and colonial stagnation, the boy’s self-dramatization undercut by the drabness of the bazaar. Bloom draws attention to the tonal modulation in the final paragraph, the self-lacerating clarity that dawns upon the narrator. That moment—“Gazing up into the darkness…”—transforms from a mere ending into a revelation about self-consciousness itself.
Bloom’s great strength lies in his refusal to reduce literature to sociology, even while acknowledging context. He recognises Dublin’s paralysis—the moral and political inertia that Joyce anatomises—but he does not allow the stories to collapse into documentary. Instead, he foregrounds what he calls aesthetic power: the shaping intelligence behind the narrative restraint.
In 1999, I needed that lesson.
I was still forming my reading habits, oscillating between impressionistic responses and the newly acquired vocabulary of theory. Bloom’s method offered a third way: rigorous yet intimate. He modelled a criticism that was personal without being indulgent. His voice in the book is assured, occasionally imperious, but always anchored in the text itself.
Most illuminating for me was Bloom’s treatment of “The Dead.” Even before I fully grasped its critical reputation, I sensed its gravity. Bloom articulates why the story feels like a culmination—not only of ‘Dubliners’ but of a certain modern consciousness. He traces Gabriel Conroy’s journey from social self-satisfaction to existential humility, emphasising the snowfall as both literal and symbolic.
Under Bloom’s guidance, the famous closing image of snow falling “upon all the living and the dead” becomes less a poetic flourish and more a metaphysical levelling.
What struck me most was Bloom’s insistence on Joyce’s generosity. It is easy to read Joyce as cold, as clinically detached from his characters. Bloom counters this by highlighting the compassion embedded in the irony. The paralysis Joyce depicts is not merely condemned; it is mourned. That interpretive nuance changed my relationship with the text. I began to see Joyce not as an aloof modernist dismantling his homeland, but as a deeply ambivalent observer—critical yet tethered by memory.
There is, of course, a paradox in encountering Joyce through Bloom. Bloom is himself a formidable presence, with strong preferences and an unmistakable critical temperament.
One risks reading Joyce as Bloom’s Joyce. And yet, in my case, that mediation was enabling rather than constraining. Bloom’s confidence disarmed my intimidation. He made it permissible to struggle with the text, to reread, to dwell in ambiguity.
After Bloom, I returned to ‘Dubliners’ alone. And the stories opened.
I began to notice the choreography of repetition: the recurring motifs of windows, lamps, music. I sensed the careful progression from childhood to public life, from private fantasies to communal rituals. The collection revealed itself as a mosaic of arrested motion. Bloom had pointed out the architecture; I could now wander within it.
Perhaps the most lasting impact of Bloom’s study was its implicit argument about difficulty. Joyce’s prose, at least in ‘Dubliners’, is not difficult because it is obscure. It is difficult because it is exact. The emotional calibrations are fine-tuned; the ironies are delicate. Bloom teaches the reader to slow down, to resist paraphrase. In doing so, he restores the dignity of attention.
Looking back, I realize that 1999 marked not just my introduction to Joyce, but my initiation into serious literary reading. Bloom functioned as a bridge between admiration and understanding. He showed me that great literature rewards patience, that interpretive labor is not an obstacle but a form of intimacy.
There are moments in Bloom’s book where his evaluative instincts surface—his placement of Joyce within a hierarchy of Western genius. At the time, I accepted these judgements almost reverentially. Later, I would question the rigidity of such canons.
But even in dissent, I retained something of Bloom’s fervour. He writes about Joyce as if the stakes are existential. That intensity is contagious.
What remains with me most vividly is the sense of demystification without diminishment. Bloom does not strip Joyce of complexity; he reveals the craft behind it. He reminds us that even the most intimidating writers are, at base, makers of sentences—arrangers of words striving for resonance.
When I say, “Joyce was no problem after that,” I mean that the aura of inaccessibility dissolved. The work still demanded effort, but it no longer felt adversarial. Bloom had reframed the challenge as an invitation.
In the years since, I have revisited Joyce without Bloom’s mediation. I have read other critics, encountered competing interpretations, engaged with theoretical lenses Bloom himself might have resisted. Yet that first encounter remains foundational. It taught me that guidance need not be dogmatic; it can be liberating.
Bloom’s study of ‘Dubliners’ may not be his most famous work, but for me, it was transformative. It turned apprehension into curiosity and reverence into engagement. It taught me that criticism, at its best, is an act of accompaniment—a walking beside rather than a speaking over.
1999 now feels distant, almost archival. But when I open ‘Dubliners’, I can still sense the echo of that first guided reading. The streets of Dublin no longer intimidate. They beckon. And somewhere in the background, Bloom’s voice reminds me to read slowly, to trust the sentence, to honour the epiphany.
Joyce remains complex. He remains inexhaustible. But he is no longer forbidding.
He is, instead, a companion.
A must-read.
October 28, 2019
Үлиссийг уншихдаа өөрийгөө бэлдэж л уншсан бөлгөө :)
November 11, 2019
To be reviewed soon...
October 24, 2020
Phenomenal illuminations of Joyce's little book of epiphanies.
March 28, 2023
just don't fuck with Joyce like I used to.
May 29, 2023
I hate this man
June 22, 2025
Utterly stunning book so glad I left it till later!
Read
December 7, 2025I cannot escape this book
August 22, 2011
Joyce's collection of short stories can be confusing at times but ultimately tells a significant, overarching story of the lives of several disadvantaged citizens living in 1800s Dublin, Ireland. No issue goes untouched here: Joyce drags the Catholic church, family dynamics, sex, alcoholism, violence, and marriage under his microscope and dissects them to the reader's delight and fascination. This book is not only a study of humanity in Dublin but a story of humanity in general; the tragedies and heroes in the daily lives of these Dubliners are familiar in all cultures and in all times. "Two Gallants", "Eveline", "The Boarding House", "A Painful Case", "Ivy Day in the Committee Room", and "The Dead" are, in my opinion, the best of the stories. Joyce's social commentary is strikingly original and eternally relevant.
February 27, 2012
Many years ago I read the Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and I did not like it, so much so, that it has taken many years for me to reconsider Joyce and finally read more of his works. I am glad I read The Dubliners because I now have an inkling of understanding why he considered by many as one of the greatest literary geniuses. Although depressing, and maybe not a great book for the month of February, I found it to be a touching, depressing, thoughtful, provoking, angry, and even lovely. Maybe I will tackle more Joyce.
March 20, 2012
I am not without appreciation for the effect Joyce had on literature going forward from the early 1900's, and thank him for his efforts. For me, the fact is just plain and simply that Irish politics and what Ireland was going through in the early 2oth century just is not important and doesn't interest me in the least. So, I'm not completely spell bound by the great one. I did enjoy "The Dead" and a few of the other selections in the collection that focused on human frailties, but all in all this is only OK.
September 1, 2011
it's so difficult to read this in the summertime. i'm going back over it again, and need to try it yet again in the winter. the Penguin edition has a really fantastic introduction and even better notes.
September 17, 2011
A set of short stories that paints a haunting portrait of the city of Dublin, whose citizens James Joyce himself described as "paralyzed." As with all short story collections, some are excellent while others are sub-par.
December 15, 2011
I did not finish reading this book; just because I did not realize it was not the stories, but commentaries on the stories. I think I want to try reading the stories first, but I would've felt bad to give this book a low rating based on the fact that I did not read the whole thing.
March 15, 2012
Vignettes, early life in Dublin, people there. Interesting examples for wanna be writers on how to write excellent character descriptions. I understand that Joyce sweat bullets while writing this. For me, it would have been a better read for college writing courses.
October 8, 2013
Most boring book I've read for really long (if ever). Basically I forgot after few pages where the stories had started, I just couldn't keep my thoughts on it. I know this supposed to be classic, but for me it was just wasting my time. Joyce wasn't for me, but at least I did give it a go.
October 2, 2007
since i can't seem to be able to read ulysees , this will have to do for now
September 21, 2011
What exquisite writing!!
October 14, 2011
Not bad. I really like the writing style/imagery on the micro level. But only one or two of the stories were compelling to me on the macro/big picture level.
November 11, 2011
This book is a good sampler of the subjects and writing style of Joyce. One might use it to decide if they are up to continuing along the path.
February 21, 2012
Joyce is the man.
March 11, 2012
Really tough read, but was lucky to do it in CEGEP as part of a Modern Irish Stories english class. This helped muddle through some of the details.
May 22, 2025
la fierté des Dublinois.e.s, je le aime pitié
September 11, 2016
Amazing prose. Very emotional and thought-provoking.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews