Triangular Structure in James Joyces Dubliners Essay -- James Joyce D

Triangular Structure in James Joyces Dubliners Within the body of literary criticism that surrounds James Joyces Dubliners is a disposition to preclude analysis beyond an Irish level, beyond Joyces own intent to create the uncreated conscience of his race. However, in order to place the text within an fitly expansive context, it seems necessary to examine the implications of the volumes predominant thematic elements within the broader scope of human nature. The psychic drama which places Dubliners within a three-tiered psychological framework desire, repression, agression lies at the root of a larger triangular structure that pervades many of our most fundamental belief systems and deportment processes. This structure forms the basis for the tenets of some of the most larger-than-life attempts at a definition of the subprogram and origin of humanity, from the holy trinity of Catholicism to Freuds theory of id, ego, and superego. Dubliners, in its own perhaps less ambitious roc king horse of a certain significance of life, embodies and exemplifies similarly triangular frameworks. They are arranged concentrically, relating to both content and structure and radiating out from that central psychological triangle desire, repression, aggression. It is this structural mechanism, prevalent throughout the volume, which reveals the philosophical implications of Dubliners and places it within a broader interpretive context. While it is clear that this psychic drama manifests in its entirety in approximately every individual story in the volume, perhaps more important when viewing Dubliners from a broader perspective is the notion that the three elements of this drama seem to rule respectively within the three life stages which form the org... ...ugh a connection such as Walzl makes between ancient interpretive theory and the text of Dubliners, it becomes bare that the previously described triangular frameworks present in the volume serve to connect it to a cer tain tradition of philosophy and psychology which attempts to derive the purpose and the intrinsic driving forces of human life and behavior. Numerous examples of these triangular theories exist throughout the history of thought traditional notions of past, present, and future Freuds theory of id, ego, and superego Lacans division of life into what is real, imaginary, and symbolic Barthes idea of sign, signifier, and signified just to name a few. It is debatable whether or not Joyces structural decisions had any conscious relationship to this tradition of three-level thought, that the implications are present regardless of his intentions.