“Caliban’s Mirror”: The 2022 Wilde and Joyce Symposium (Trinity College Dublin, 5-6 May, 2022)
In June 1906, James Joyce wrote to his publisher Grant Richards, who suggested changes to Dubliners for mitigating the text’s supposed ‘indecency’, “I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.” Joyce’s metaphor recalls the popular Wildean aphorism, first published in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray: “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban at seeing his own face in a glass.