European Literary Trails: Study  Abroad  Program
Director: Professor Jolanta W. Wawrzycka

Coole Park
Joyce of Dublin  Trinity College  Glendalough


For a Joycean, the highlight of visit to Dublin is a tour of Clongowes Wood College, a boys' school housed in a 15th-c. castle and famed by its famous pupil, James Joyce, who attended it at "six and a half," from 1888 to 1891.  When I toured it in 1992 with a group of Joyceans (as a part of  the13th International James Joyce Symposium), we could still pass along the walls of that "low dark narrow corridor"--portraits and all--that led to the castle, and immortalized by Joyce as he has little Stephen go to see the rector. However, the participants of the "Bloomsday 100" Symposium in 2004 found that corridor nonexistent, though a door in the gallery still marks the place of the passage. Much has changed in the castle, but I hope that this page will help the readers of A Portrait visualize a few sites connected with Stephen and his days in Clongowes... 


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Clongowes Wood College: approaching the castle (1) and  a few views of the castle (2, 3, 4).

"low dark narrow corridor that led to the castle" is now  behind this door...
  Glimpses of the old corridors still there  and the portraits, re-hung 

Playing field and the "square ditch"

         
Decorative plasterwork in the room leading to the library, and two views of the reading room....

     
Stain glass windows above the great staircase in the foyer of the castle: looking left, one can see the chapel, and looking straight ahead, one can ponder the long entrance driveway, a great look-out point (see the window in photograph 1, above).

                                     
Objects of interest in the Clongowes Wood College Chapel:
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, Our Lady Virgin Mary, and a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy.
 


Clongowes Wood College, June 19, 2004: Franca Ruggieri, Jolanta Wawrzycka, Rosa Maria Bosinelli and Fritz Senn.


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