- 17 - Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 9 Sayı: 46 Volume: 9 Issue: 46 Ekim 2016 October 2016 www.sosyalarastirmalar.com Issn: 1307-9581 THE PARALYSIS OF NATIONALISM: JAMES JOYCE’S IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM Mehmet Akif BALKAYA * Abstract James Joyce is well known thanks to his short stories collected in his household word Dubliners, among which “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” has a unique space for its political theme through which the hypocrite canvassers and partisans are questioned for their nationalistic discourses. Since the plot is related to municipal election, Joyce deals with the themes of localism, nationalism and customs. The aim of this paper is to examine the story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” referring to the terms and themes of nationalism and political dissidence. Although the canvassers in the story act as if they were nationalists, it seems that they do not really care about the nationalist Irish leader Charles Parnell or Ireland. Nation and nationalism are the terms revealed through the dialogues of the canvassers in Joyce’s story. It will be concluded that the canvassers and the partisans in this story are spiritually and politically decayed since they do not care the policies of their parties. Keywords: James Joyce, Dubliners, Ivy Day, Charles Parnell, Nationalism, Ireland and England. 1. Introduction James Joyce, born in 1882 – Dublin, was a modernist writer portraying the life of man and woman struggling in the changing society and world of the 20 th century. Although an Irish, Joyce lived in Europe, especially Paris and Zurich, throughout his life, yet he wrote about the Irish people and Dublin as if the city were a character both embracing and flinging away its people. As Tymoczho quotes in his book, Joyce says “… I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.” (qtd. in Tymoczho, 1997: 260). By particular, Joyce means Dublin and therefore Dubliners stand for the universal nature of human. Joyce’s well-known works are Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan’s Wake (1939) in which universal themes and motifs lie. As Kevin J. H. Dettmar has put it, “[Joyce’s] one short- story collection, three novels, one play, and two volumes of poems have won him the devoted attention of students, scholars, and general readers alike; in scholarly terms alone, Joyce is now the second most densely explicated of English-language authors, after only Shakespeare” (Dettmar, 2004: xiii). His work Dubliners portrays the “… picture of Dublin and the domestic, social and political ills of its middle class at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (Mahon, 2009: 2). Kuğu Tekin, in her comparative article, states, regarding Dublin, that “Dublin [is an] inspirational cit[y] shaping the intellectual, literary and artistic world of James Joyce…” (2015: 410). Joyce’s well-known work Dubliners, 1914, “…offers the reader an apparently faithful picture of Dublin and the domestic, social and political ills of its middle class at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (Mahon, 2009: 2). It is a truth that “Dublin suffered a lot throughout history from wars, plagues, British exploitation, which caused the decay and decline of Ireland, and Dublin” (Balkaya, 2013: 55). This paper examines “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”, the twelfth short story in Joyce’s Dubliners, in terms of the politics and nationalism as represented through the manners and dialogues of the canvassers in it. It is also the aim of this paper to reveal the fact that “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” has a unique space for its political theme through which the hypocrite canvassers and partisans are questioned for their nationalistic discourses. The canvassers are portrayed to be passive because of not taking into action for Home-Rule; therefore, paralysis of nationalism, put forth twice –the first: through the poem read by Joe Hynes, the second: through the dialogue on the arrival of King Edward, as a theme is analysed in this paper. 2. “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” The story takes place at a committee room on 6th November, the death anniversary of the Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell, whose importance constitutes the background of the story. Ivy Day is a national day, held on October 6 in Ireland, in memory of the nationalist politician leader Charles Stewart Parnell, lived between the years 1846 and 1891. Therefore, “Irish political paralysis after the political downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell…” (Mahon, 2009: 3) forms the essence of the story which revolves around the dialogues of the canvassers of the upcoming municipal election. Among the canvassers are Mat O’Connar, Joe Hynes, John Henchy and Mr. Crofton. Other characters are Old Jack, the caretaker of the * Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Science and Letters, Aksaray University. PhD Candidate, Department of English Literature and Culture, Atılım University, makif.balkaya@hotmail.co.uk