DUBLINERS, BY JAMES JOYCE, AND ITS REPRESENTATION OF THE IRISH INDEPENDENCE PROCESS Nicolas Pelicioni de OLIVEIRA 1 ABSTRACT: This paper presents James Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners (1914), and its relation with the Irish Independence process. Of the fifteen stories in the book, only “The Dead”, the last and longest one, is analysed in deep. KEYWORDS: James Joyce; Dubliners; Irish; Ireland; The Dead. James Joyce was born on 2 February, 1882, in Dublin, where he lived until his family moved to the seaside town of Bray. He studied in Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit school known as the Eton of Ireland. At the age of 16, in 1898, he began to study modern languages (English, Italian, and French) at University College Dublin, and, in 1901, he published The Day of the Rabblement, at his own expense, an critical essay first refused by the college magazine that criticised the parochialism and chauvinistic trend of the Irish Literary Theatre. The following year, Joyce left Dublin and went to Paris with the intention of studying medicine. In April 1903 Joyce returned to Dublin after receiving a telegram with the news that his mother, May Joyce, who suffered from cancer, was dying. “On his arrival, his mother pleaded with him to take confession and receive communion: he refused. She died that August” (ABBOT; BELL, 2001, p. 7). On 16 June, 1904, Joyce met Nora Barnacle, the woman who would later become his wife. The date was represented in Ulysses and has come to be known as “Bloomsday”. Nora Barnacle was Joyce’s lifelong companion and also the inspiration for the character Molly in Ulysses. In 1904, Joyce and Nora moved to Pola, Austria- 1 Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” – UNESP; Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas – IBILCE; Departamento de Letras Modernas – DLEM; São José do Rio Preto – São Paulo – Brasil; Orientação: Prof Dr Peter James Harris.