Geographies of Emotions and of Social Relations in Dubliners by James Joyce

Abstract

Landscape is an intangible resource defined by its visual appearance and the sensory experiences it inspires. People and communities shape and are shaped by their environments and by assigning meanings to them. This language of visual expression captures deep emotional ties that evoke memories and the unique “spirit of place,” reflecting both positive feelings like comfort and negative ones such as fear. From microscale settings it encompasses unique and distinctive qualities of different areas, like rooms and neighborhoods, to macroscale environments like cities and nations, creating, thus, a sense of place. Emotions intertwined with place structure our experiences and explain the impact of actions. This article proposes an interdisciplinary approach to reading Dubliners, blending landscape studies, semiotics, and lexicomteric and cultural analysis to reveal the emotional and spatial layers in the narratives. It emphasizes engaging with places through a “geography of emotions” rather than observing them from a distance, thereby exploring Dublin’s emotional topography.