The Dubliners Dilemma Analysis

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The Dubliners Dilemma, a one-man-show devised and performed by Declan Gorman. James Joyce’s “Dubliners” was a long time in finding a publisher. An early potential publisher had been one Grant Richards. He was nervous about publishing because he feared it would open him and his firm, given the scandalous content of some of the stories, to prosecution by the powers that be. However about eight years after initially rejecting it, Grant Richards did agree to publish it in 1914.
Adaptations of Joyce’s works and stage biographies of the writer abound, making it difficult for a writer to distinguish his effort and to create an appeal that will extend beyond tourist audiences or Joyce aficionados. Gorman, former director of City Arts, and a compelling
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One small part of the puzzle missing from Gorman’s linking script is that the printer, not just the publisher, could be prosecuted for undertaking to print obscenity. In The Dubliners Dilemma the printer’s baulking seems to suggest a moral imperative, which is misleading. This quibble, however, does not detract from the sustained level of good editorial choices made to the relevant texts or from an animated and intelligent performance. With Dubliners, Joyce manages to peel back a layer, and expose what lies just beneath the surface of his native city, providing us with a sweet, tender, and ultimately beautiful view of the mundane. This makes Declan Gorman’s performance of The Dubliners Dilemma all the more impressive, as his one man performance brims with all the life and energy that Joyce surely wished to imbue in his work.
A mix of verbatim text, as well as a dramatisation of the struggle to have the then-controversial work published, The Dubliners Dilemma is an impressive display of one man’s love of literature. Gorman performs abridged versions of several of the poignant vignettes, while also taking the role of Joyce and his soon-to-be publisher as they wage a war of words, debating over matters of censorship and obscenity, outlining Joyce’s refusal to conform to modern

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