1.2 Research Meaning and Purpose

In Dubliners, James Joyce has begun to turn his attention to the spiritual world of heroes. He uses a novel and unique artistic technique, which is called “Epiphany” to show the intricate thoughts and feelings of the heroes. It means a kind of sudden realization. “Epiphany denotes both that moment where in the whatness, the ‘quidditas,’ or essential nature and being, of an object, event, gesture, word, phrase, or ‘phase’ of mind--no matter how insignificant the object of perception may seem at a casual glance--is suddenly and wholly apprehended by the perceiving consciousness, as well as the experience of that perception” (Lewis, 1982: 4). At the end of almost every story, the hero becomes suddenly enlightened and sees his dilemma clearly and realizes the essence of life. Many commentators have studied his Dubliners from different angles and with different ways subsequently come to different conclusions. 

However, there are still many mysteries left unsolved. By studying the paralysis of love and epiphany in James Joyce’s Dubliners, we can have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of the author and his works and get innovation and breakthrough. 

1.3 Literature Review

Dubliners is his renowned collection of short stories, which can be called the most famous collection of short stories in the west in the 20th century. The heroes in the stories are also analyzed and discussed by many scholars from the angles of feminism, male chauvinism, the characters of women and men, the paralysis and the epiphany of the heroes and so on. 

In China, scholars’ research of Joyce began in the 1920s. However, the study of Joyce has been limited to the simple introduction of the writer and the work for nearly 30 years in the period of Chinese modernist literature. Most researchers have not read Joyce’s works as a matter of fact, so they just simply provided the literary circles with some limited, partial, and even false words and reports. In the 1930s, modernism literature reached its second peak in China. Under this background, the articles of introducing Joyce gradually grew and were no longer scattered. It was not until the 1980s that the study of Joyce and his works really began. Since the 1990s to nowadays, the Chinese scholars have made significant progress and certain achievements in the study of Joyce. The interpretation of Dubliners is from different angles, including the research of the themes, characters of heroes, culture, style, aesthetics and artistic features and so on. Li Xi stated that the Irish society under British colonial domination shows a kind of spiritual paralysis in his paper “Spiritual Paralysis in James Joyce’s Dubliners”. “Paralysis is presented from the first story to the last one in Dubliners and becomes gradually more powerful and all-encompassing” (Li Xi, 2006: 3).

Western scholars’ research on the collection of short stories Dubliners is relatively broad and far-reaching. Many related monographs, and research reports and academic papers have been published one after another. Some scholars have studied Joyce’s works in the angles of form and art. They focus on the emotional negativity of the heroes, such as the heroes in “Araby”, “The Boarding House”, “A Little Cloud”, “A Painful Case” and other short stories. Zennure Köseman has ever analyzed the spiritual paralysis and epiphany in “Eveline” and “The Boarding House”. Benjamin Boysen discussed the love of heroes in Dubliners from the angle of emotion and used the word “necropolis” to stress a focal point the emotional negativity of the heroes in “Araby”, “The Hoarding House”, “A Little Cloud” and other short stories. The research of Dubliners in the west has gone through four stages. It started from 1914 to 1950s, which was its stage of beginning. The scholars mainly focused on book review and theme research. From 1960s to 1970s, the research came to the stage of development. More and more scholars devoted themselves to researching the social and historical criticism of the themes of Dubliners. Afterwards, structuralist criticism and post-structuralist criticism appeared. The scholars tended to work on narratology research and language research, which made the research reach the stage of prosperity from 1970s to 1980s. From 1990s to nowadays, the research came to the stage of multiple development and the scholars turned to the cultural criticism, so multiple theories and viewpoints appeared one after another.