1.2 Literature Review

With the fifteenth story “The Dead” left undiscussed, the fourteen stories of Dubliners, to which “Araby” belongs, can be categorized into four parts according to their themes. The first three are themed with disillusion, the second four entrapment, the next three sterility and the final four corruption, the succession of which “shows a decline in the characters’ reactions from painful realization of situation to almost total unawareness” (Walzl, 1961, p.222). Researches on Dubliners mainly focus on the literary themes, symbolism, structures, epiphany, images as well as myths (Li, 2014, p. 169). 

As opposed to Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “Araby” can be interpreted as “a portrait of the artist as a young boy” (Stone, 1965, p.376). Joyce was fully aware of the duality of imperialism imposed upon Ireland that is marked by British secular imperialism as well as Roman Catholic imperialism (Tao, 2014, p.52). In terms of secular imperialism, the post-colonial theory of “The Other” is applied to draw a comparison between the Arabic world and Ireland, both of which were under British imperial manipulation (Fan, 2011, p. 17). In terms of Catholic imperialism, images of corrupted clergymen and churches are often indicted not only in “Araby” but in other stories of Dubliners to reflect the deeply-rooted religious control over Ireland (French, 1978, p. 464). On the other hand, Irish nationalism that aimed to overthrow the imperialism in realms of religion, politics and culture tended to be either too conservative or far too extreme (Tao, 2014, p.53). Radical ethnocentrism led by separatists is believed to have caused destructive insurrections and procured the very downfall of Irish independence (He, 2012, p. 90). E.W. Said pointed out in his work Culture and Imperialism that the common denominator between nativism and imperialism lies in their similar attempt to deepen the power gaps between different religious, political and racial pisions in a class-based society.

Though many aspects concerning the image of female characters, the Catholicism, the Orient and imperialism in “Araby” are mentioned and discussed, few have ever viewed them from the perspective of binary oppositions, from which we can not only fathom the other end concerning the male, secularism, the Occident and nationalism either explicitly thorough the text or implicitly through allusion and comparison but also see how these oppositions are deconstructed.,源^自#吹冰*文·论~文]网[www.chuibin.com

1.3 Research Approach

Derrida believes that in traditional binary oppositions the two opposing sides do not share equal co-existence but rather conform to a hierarchy system in which one of them gains an upper hand over the other in terms of logic and value (Wang & Zhu, 2004, p. 69). In the essay binary oppositions in character establishment, environmental description and literary themes would be created within such hierarchy and recreated in a way to deconstruct themselves and the hierarchy to which they are confined. 

With the help of E. W. Said in dialectically analyzing the relationships between the Occident and the Orient, the nationalism and imperialism, the following chapters will discuss in detail these oppositions as well as their deconstructions with an attempt to unveil the panorama of Irish society before Anglo-Irish war and to catch a glimpse of what ‘true Irishness’ is about in the eyes of James Joyce. 

2 Construction of Binary Oppositions in “Araby”

In “Araby” the construction of the binary oppositions including light versus darkness; male versus female; spirituality versus secularism; the Occident versus the Orient; nationalists versus imperialists help provide a natural reflection of societal, political and global hierarchy which Irish people are bound by.