Lecture

Ours is the Omphalos: The Sandycove Martello Tower in the book and on the bay

Thursday 11 September | 18:00 – 19:30 | Old Carnegie Library | Dun Laoghaire | FREE

This lecture, give by the Curator of Joyce Tower & Museum, Alice Ryan was originally delivered to the James Joyce Summer School in Trieste in July 2025 and explores the signification of the Tower as it appears in the famous first episode of Ulysses and its current incarnation as a museum.. 

This lecture is part of the Joycenights Festival celebrating the anniversary of the week that Joyce stayed at the Sandycove Martello Tower – 9-14 September 1904

Dr Alice Ryan is Curator of the James Joyce Tower in Sandycove, Dublin caring for a unique collection of Joycean artefacts as well as the Martello Tower itself, its ‘cold domed room’, and its famous stairhead. She regularly delivers an eighteen-week course on reading Ulysses at the James Joyce Tower and previously at Saor-Ollscoil na hÉireann. She has presented papers at the International James Joyce Symposia in Utrecht (2014) and Dublin (2022). She was also co-editor with Helen Solterer of the 2022 reissue of C. P. Curran’s James Joyce Remembered.