James Joyce's Shorter Masterpiece: The Dead
(Complete Item Description)
- Abstract:
Irish poet and writer James Joyce 18821941 is considered by many to be one of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century James Joyce's writing is not short on masterpieces Ulysses A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake inspire awe and fear in those who have read them or read about them said Parsons The Dead written when Joyce was just 25 years old is the last and most famous short story in Dubliners a collection of 14 short stories first published in 1914 The Dead centres on Dubliner Gabriel Conroy his wife Gretta and the epiphany he experiences at his aunts party In 1987 director John Huston made a film of The Dead this was adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical in 1999The Dead is a gentle warm yet finally frighteningly clear-sighted vision of middle class Irish life its pleasures and its terrors In it Joyce produces one of the most compelling accounts of the alienation of modernity and the psychological effects of colonisation This story is truly one of the great masterpieces of modern writing which cannot fail to reproduce in the reader the feeling of emptiness that engulfs these characters adrift from their cultural moorings The final paragraphs alone have become a classic statement of the sublime nature of modern life. This image used above is part of the Cornell Joyce Collection and was released into the public domain.
- Subject:
- Humanities, Social Sciences
- Grade Level:
- Post-secondary
- Collection:
- University of Cape Town