Bloomsday Talk: Save the Trees of Ireland

Arboreal reality and fantasy in Ulysses from Barney Kiernan’s pub to Avondale

Written by Donal Magner

Presented by Brendan Lacey

In Ulysses, Joyce repeatedly references trees and the nature of Irish forestry in 1904. The talk explores Joyce’s arboreal world and transposes the narrative to what was actually happening to rescue Ireland’s vastly depleted forests at the time. While the customers in Barney Kiernan’s public house in Dublin are bemoaning the decline of Irish forests in the “Cyclops” episode of Ulysses, Avondale Estate, Co. Wicklow, is being purchased by the State, which begins a new chapter “to reafforest the land”.