Film and TV Editor John O’Connor reflects on how Ireland’s writers use their capital city as their biggest source of inspiration and Dublin’s role as a UNESCO City of Literature
Dublin, with its Georgian facades and timeless allure, has long been more than just a backdrop in Irish literature. The city has become a universal living and breathing character in its own right, its cobbled streets and rigid social structure shaping the fates of some of the most memorable figures in modern fiction. From a singular, introspective day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, to the raw, tumultuously charged love story of Connell and Marianne in Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
With four Nobel prize winners (Yeats, Beckett, Shaw and Heaney), a brace of universities of global literary distinction, over half a dozen book festivals, and the internationally prestigious Dublin Literary Award, it is no wonder that Dublin was designated the highly coveted title of a UNESCO City of Literature in 2010. This recognition highlights its cultural profile and international standing as a city of literary excellence.
There is not one consistent thread that weaves all Dublin novels together despite each character walking along the same streets, passing the ghosts of the literary giants who came before them.
When compared to other literary cities, a Dublin novel cannot be described through buzzwords. For instance, A New York novel is distinctly lonely and melancholy, usually centered around a character who is lost, think The Great Gatsby, The Bell Jar, or A Little Life. A distinctive Parisian novel usually objects to be written in the modern day, preferring to live in the past and tackling much larger themes of isolation, love and identity, think The Nightingale, A Moveable Feast, or Giovanni’s Room.
Dublin defies such rash definitions of the literature it has inspired as there is not one consistent thread that weaves all Dublin novels together despite each character walking along the same streets, passing the ghosts of the literary giants who came before them.
The Irish city, once home to the likes of W.B Yeats and Oscar Wilde has seen new waves of Irish talent emerge and utilise Dublin in their works while paying homage to the great writers who came before them - but some writers make use of and perceive the city in a completely different way. Once again, let’s take Joyce and Rooney for example. When Joyce saw Sandycove as the fortress setting of the reflective beginning of his controversial and groundbreaking novel Ulysses, over 100 years later Rooney presents the same location in Conversations with Friends as merely another Dart stop - a brief moment in the journey of Frances, who is on her way to meet the married older man with whom she is having an affair.
The literary heritage of Dublin cannot be written about without mentioning Hodges Figgis, a literary focal point and landmark in Dublin which has appeared in many Irish novels. Stephen Dedalus ponders his own life while looking through the windows of its iconic storefront, and a turning point chapter of Rooney’s Conversations With Friends is also set in the store, with the chapter describing one of the many book launches the store plays host to in real life, including some of Rooney’s own. Through these literary references, Hodges Figgis has become more than just a bookstore - it is a symbol of Dublin’s rich literary heritage.
When a character struggles to fully embrace the city, it’s often a reflection of their hesitation to move forward. This is emotionally captured in Normal People, when Connell breaks down in therapy, declaring, "I hate it here, and I can never go back."
When discussing Dublin as a source of literary inspiration it is important to differentiate between the writers who were from Dublin and those from rural Ireland. Dublin is not often shown in the same light as writers who come from outside of County Dublin.
Sally Rooney, a central figure in contemporary literature and completely unavoidable in this discussion, was born in County Mayo and later moved to Dublin to attend Trinity College. All four of her novels explore the lives of Trinity-educated millennials navigating a post-crisis Ireland. Rooney’s unique experience of attending university in Dublin as an outsider - someone coming from outside the city - laces her work with a distinct perspective. Her characters' responses to Dublin reveal how the city represents adulthood for them. When a character struggles to fully embrace the city, it’s often a reflection of their hesitation to move forward. This is emotionally captured in Normal People, when Connell breaks down in therapy, declaring, "I hate it here, and I can never go back." For Rooney, Dublin is a place of transformation, and her characters' challenges with the city reflect their larger struggles with personal growth and change.
How can Dublin be considered just another city when it manifests as a main character in the books that we cherish most?