Tower

Joyce lived with Gogarty in "the tower" at Sandycove Point, several miles southeast of Dublin, for a few days in September 1904. Telemachus realistically depicts the top of the tower and the living space one floor below. It also mentions the military history that produced the defensive fortification. But Joyce chose this dramatic setting as much for its symbolic resonances as for its basis in lived experience: it gave him a way to begin his novel with parallels to Homer's Odyssey and Shakespeare's Hamlet, both of which tell stories of usurpation and revenge focused on the powerful visual image of a royal palace. [2024] As has recently been pointed out, it also allowed him to accommodate another part of the life of Odysseus: his participation in the destruction of Troy.

John Hunt 2011


The Sandycove tower.


The Sandycove tower in its setting. Source: www.dalkeyhomepage.ie.


Robert Dudley chromolithograph of Hamlet and the ghost on the battlements of Elsinore. Source: www.meisterdrucke.us.


One of the towers of Helsingør, the Danish model for Elsinore.
Source: www.peterlenitravel.com.