Imagination Of Exotic Lands In Dubliners

Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century faced a cultural tradeoff.The Irish cultural traditions consisting of both indigenous and British colonial cultures underwent modernity.Politically,Irish nationalism was on the rise,demanding political and cultural decolonization;religiously,the Roman Catholic authority reinforced its spiritual control over Irish people by dint of the support from nationalist powers;in social life,industrialization and urbanization accelerated the disintegration of collective moral codes,leaving individuals at a loss.James Joyce’s collection Dubliners depicts individuals from all strata of the transitioning Irish society to present the overview and social ills of Dublin,the"centre of paralysis",unveiling the author’s realistic concerns about the Irish nation.With due attention to the socio-historical factors behind the transformational issue and Joyce’s exilic experience,this thesis probes into the imagination of exotic lands in Dubliners and contends that exotic lands as ideal reflections transcending time and space reveal an authorial anxiety towards Ireland’s spiritual plight.Dubliners seek spiritual escape in their imagination of exotic lands and attempt to break away from struggling life through their departure from Dublin.This thesis contends that Joyce,as an exile,creates the imaginary exotic and the Third Space with the hybridity of "domestic" and "foreign" in his texts in the hope of awaking his people from the "paralysis".The first part introduces Dubliners,previous studies on it,the key term"exotic land" and Homi K.Bhabha’s Third Space:the Third Space is a space of inbetwenness that comes to the fore during cultural exchanges,dissolving colonists’ authoritative discourses with its hybridity.The body part consists of three chapters.Chapter 1 discusses the imagination of exotic lands in Dubliners.Chapter 2 analyzes the spiritual paralysis behind the disillusion of imagination and the possibility of getting out of plight via Homi Bhabha’s theory of the Third Space;Chapter 3 summarizes Joyce’s textual practice of imagination with regard to his exile identity.The thesis concludes that the imagination of exotic lands permeating Dubliners has become an actively or passively constructed Third Space,which not only reflects the protagonists’ desire to escape from the dreary reality and spiritual paralysis but indicates the possibility of cultural diversity through hybridity,through which Joyce unveils his cosmopolitan thinking towards Irish nationality during the transitional period.