Rogerson's Quay
Rogerson's Quay
In Brief
"By lorries along sir John Rogerson's quay": at the beginning
of Lotus Eaters Bloom stands more than a mile
southeast of his home, in the docklands near the mouth of the
Liffey. As the chapter progresses he will move south from this
starting point, away from the river, in an inland action that
recalls the corresponding episode in the Odyssey.
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A quay (pronounced KEY) is a wharf where oceangoing ships can
be loaded and unloaded. In Dublin the term applies (with
different proper names every few blocks) to all the
central-city streets running along the river's banks, even
though bridge construction through the centuries has pushed
maritime access farther and farther east. (Today, the
docklands have been moved off the Liffey entirely.) Gifford
glosses "lorries" as the "waterside cranes" used to transfer
goods to and from the moored ships. Gunn and Hart say that
they are flat wagons (35). Kiberd, Johnson, and Slote are
silent on the matter.
Sir John Rogerson's Quay is named for a former Lord Mayor of Dublin who in 1713 was allowed to develop 133 acres near Ringsend on the eastern edge of the river's south bank, on the condition that he construct a quay. The wharf was operational by the middle of the 18th century, and over the course of the 19th century many storehouses and other businesses were built along it.
ยง The echo is fleeting, but Joyce must have known that by beginning his chapter on the docks he was evoking the setting of Homer's story of the lotos eaters. In Book 9 of the Odyssey, Odysseus recounts how his ships anchored along an unknown coastline and he sent out a scouting party to learn who lived farther inland. As in other such adventures (especially those involving the Lestrygonians and the Cyclopes), what the mariners found there posed a mortal threat to their hopes of returning home to Ithaca. As Bloom turns right onto Lime Street and ventures inland, then, he is symbolically moving into dangerous territory.
