Question

Which phrase in this excerpt from James Joyce's "Araby is a participial phrase

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind
end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen
was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant
and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few stragging bushes under one
of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest, in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the fumiture of his house to his sister

Answer 1

In Joyce's "Araby," the participial phrase "curled and damp" describes the pages of old books, contributing to the atmospheric depiction of neglect and decay in the uninhabited house.

In this excerpt from James Joyce's "Araby," the participial phrase is "curled and damp." This phrase modifies the noun "pages" and provides additional information about the condition of the paper-covered books that the narrator found. Participial phrases often function as adjectives, describing the characteristics or conditions of nouns.

The excerpt describes the uninhabited house on North Richmond Street and the narrator's discovery of old books in the waste room. The phrase "curled and damp" adds detail to the state of the pages, indicating that they are not just old but have experienced moisture, likely contributing to their physical condition.

Joyce's use of descriptive participial phrases contributes to the overall mood and atmosphere of the narrative. The imagery of the "curled and damp" pages evokes a sense of neglect and decay, setting a tone for the story. Through such details, Joyce skillfully immerses the reader in the narrator's observations, creating a vivid and nuanced portrayal of the environment.