Distant Music

Upon every front, Ireland is divided. For centuries, her identity has been caught between the Catholicism of her past and the Protestantism of her colonists, between Gaelic and the King’s English - between an Irish and an English heritage. Does Ireland embrace the bogs and mossy crags of her Celtic past, or does she embrace the speed and vitality of modernity? The enigma of Ireland’s complicated identity, and her path into the future, is one that Irish writers have been unraveling for hundreds of years. In the last century, the answer to this question has only grown murkier with the advent of Ireland being split, both symbolically and literally, into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, within the 20th-century two sons of Ireland have brought forth compelling considerations to these titanic questions. Though they are by no means in agreement with regards to Ireland’s identity, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce have shaped Irish culture and literature more than any writers before them. All of Irish literature, whether penned by Yeats as he looks backwards or Joyce as he strives forwards, is asking this very question: who are we as the people of Ireland? By examining Joyce’s short story, The Dead, through the lens of cultural materialism, his divided affections about Ireland’s past and his anxieties about her future are brought into direct conflict with the Celtic romanticism of Yeats proposed in Cathleen ni Houlihan and other texts. The character of Gabriel in The Dead becomes the canvas upon which Joyce’s conflicted notions about Ireland are fully realized, and in this way casts Gabriel as a symbol of the identity crisis faced by Joyce and the modern Irishman.

         Additionally, Gabriel’s anxiety over his Irish heritage in The Dead becomes further symbolized in the complicated intimacy that he shares with his wife, Gretta. In this way, Gretta becomes a modern embodiment of Ireland herself, much like Cathleen ni Houlihan in Yeats’ play of the same name. Indeed, just as Gabriel represents a divided Joyce, Gretta becomes the object of those divisions - a woman, a nation, that he is attempting to love even though she herself is caught between the aroma of modernity and the distant music of her past.

         The story of a divided Ireland is very much the story of James Joyce himself. Despite being born in Dublin, Joyce’s identity as an Irishman was in constant tension throughout his life. The questions that Joyce wrestled with were no different from the very questions that his kinsmen sought to answer: who are we as Irishmen, and where are we going? This tension within the soul of Joyce becomes expressed in the character of Gabriel from The Dead. There is a real sense in which Gabriel is the ultimate expression of Irishmen: a man torn between Ireland and Britain, between a Celtic past and a globalized future. Gabriel’s own identity crisis is emblematic of not only the tension within Joyce himself, but the rivalry between himself and Yeats, and indeed symbolic of Irish history itself. Only, Joyce is less interested in absolute answers to these age-old questions and more concerned with the conversion itself, as becomes evidenced in his story, The Dead. In this way, The Dead seeks to frame the conversation about Ireland rather than propose a strict answer to the issue of Irish identity.

However, before delving into Gabriel’s divided affections over his Irish heritage, it would be wise to first consider the primary tenets of cultural materialism to understand the depths and nuances of Irish history and politics. Unlike other theoretical frameworks, cultural materialism does not become overly fixated on one specific dimension of Ireland, as though the answers were that simple, but rather considers Ireland as a whole - her economics, politics, religion, colonial past, and especially her literature. When Raymond Williams developed this theory, he did so because he contested that historical materialism was too simple; the delineation between dominant and emergent ideologies is rarely, if ever, clear cut. Culture is never static; it is alive and in a constant state of flux from one ideology to another. Dominant ideologies are slowly replaced by emerging ideologies which are, at times, usurped by residual ideologies - and through history all these ideologies are constantly recycled. The ideology of Ireland at any given moment, whether dominated by Yeats or Joyce, will impact every facet of her character and sense of self. Cultural materialism as a critical theory allows students of history to determine the state of Ireland at a given point by examining her literature and writers. Literature will often isolate emergent ideologies before they become dominant; indeed, literature itself may be the very force that perpetuates such ideologies into becoming dominant when they otherwise would have remained simply emergent or even become residual. Now, onto The Dead.

Right from Gabriel Conroy’s very first appearance in The Dead, a contrast is drawn between himself and the rest of the dinner guests. Freddy Malins, a drunk and an embarrassment, is running late to the aunt’s party, but so is Gabriel - “Freddy Malins always came late but [the aunts] wondered what could be keeping Gabriel” (Joyce 152). No doubt this was Joyce’s subtle attempt to distinguish Gabriel - that symbol of refined Irish heritage breaking into the future - from the rest of the ‘rabble’ at the party. Freddy Malins was expected to be late, but Gabriel is above reproach. Immediately following Gabriel’s arrival, he talks briefly with Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, and smiles softly “at the three syllables she had given his surname” (153). Gabriel, though he is a refined gentleman and an academic, cannot help but be amused at Lily’s pronunciation of his surname as Con-er-roy, thus betraying her ‘flat’ Dublin accent that would have contrasted with Gabriel’s Anglo-Irish accent after his years on the continent (Joyce 156; Brown 266). Despite being a Dubliner himself, Joyce is taking pains to distinguish Gabriel - and himself - from the ‘common’ folk of Dublin.

Shortly after this encounter with Lily, Gabriel ruminates about the speech that he is to give at dinner and becomes anxious over which lines of poetry he should quote. Gabriel is fearful that quoting Robert Browning would “be above the heads of his hearers” and that by reciting Shakespeare he might be suspected of “airing his superior education” (Joyce 154). Indeed, Gabriel is no ordinary Irish commoner, for he “had taken his degree in the Royal University”, a degree granting body that was established by the British Government (Joyce 161; Brown 268). It should be no surprise that Joyce himself graduated from the Royal University in 1902. Gabriel’s education and experience are thus shown to be in contrast with the other Dubliners at the party, casting “a gloom over him which he tried to dispel” as the night rolled on (Joyce 154).

However, the division between Gabriel and the rest of the party guests is not only educational, but ideological as well. Joyce was critical of Ireland’s desire to be isolated from the rest of the world and modernity - a view held chiefly by Yeats. Whereas Yeats desired that Ireland should lean into her ancestral past and sever ties with British influences, Joyce thought quite the opposite: if Ireland was to survive, she must embrace the future and modernity. Thus, when Gretta tells Gabriel’s aunts the seemingly innocuous fact that he purchased a pair of goloshes “on the continent”, she is answered with a soft murmur and an incriminating head nod from Aunt Julia (156). From goloshes to ideology, Gabriel is influenced by the comings and goings of those on the European continent. European influence was so heavy upon the soul of both Gabriel and Joyce that the music of Ireland no longer entranced them as it once did: “He liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him” (160). Indeed, the allure of Ireland’s distant music was becoming just that - distant.

The ideological divide between Gabriel and the other Dubliners, and consequently between Joyce and his fellow Irishmen as well, comes into sharper focus in his conversation with Miss Ivors. During a dance, Miss Ivors reprimands Gabriel for writing in The Daily Express, a Dublin newspaper of pronounced Unionist sympathies that hoped for greater developments with Britain (Joyce 162; Brown 269). Though he is only writing a weekly column in this newspaper, Miss Ivors accuses Gabriel of being “a West Briton” - a slur of sorts that was directed towards Anglo-Irishmen or those who sympathized with Unionist causes by separatists and Home Rule advocates (Joyce 162; Brown 269). According to Miss Ivors, Gabriel is representative of an emerging ideology within Ireland that sought to shake off the dust of their Celtic past, as proposed by Yeats, and move towards a globalized future wherein, allegedly, Ireland would become indistinguishable from the rest of the world. While this may be a simplistic view of modernism and Unionist efforts, it was nonetheless the ‘dragon’ that Yeats’ writing was attempting to slay. Understandably, Gabriel is perplexed at this charge from Miss Ivors, and “wanted to say that literature was above politics” (Joyce 162). This statement by Gabriel, however, could not be further from the truth. Cultural materialism makes clear that literature is informed by, or in response to, politics, just as politics is bound by the influence of literature. Indeed, this was the very essence and purpose of Joyce and Yeats’ lifework, though they were on opposite sides of the conversation. Literature may be “above politics” for a time, especially if it is literature that exists on the residual outskirts of a nation so as to have no impact. Alternatively, literature can be “above politics” when it is so above the dominant ideology that it goes entirely unnoticed because it too is dominant and thus in line with the ideological grain of culture. However, it should be noted that Miss Ivor’s animosity towards the British is not totally unfounded. Indeed, Joyce himself - and thus Gabriel - does not make a strawman or a mockery out of the separatists, for the entire story of The Dead is his genuine attempt to sort out his own feelings about Ireland’s past and her future trajectory.

The tension within Joyce, Miss Ivor’s scathing comments, and Gabriel’s own sense of disillusionment make greater sense when they are cast against the backdrop of Ireland’s troubling colonial history with Britain. Additionally, such a detour will help frame the historical context that cultural materialism is attempting to respond to. As Britain was emerging from the fog of the Middle Ages, she became intoxicated with a deep sense of cultural and religious superiority. This was largely predicated on Britain’s self-profession as a Christian nation, coupled with her deep and abiding desire to be held in the same breath as the Roman Empire (Callan 1). One need only read the opening passages of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to recognize the Roman inspiration for Britain's imperialist aims: “and Brutus / Split the sea, sailed from France / To England and opened cities on slopes” (Sir Gawain Poet lines 12-14). As a ‘Christian’ nation, Britain felt justified in her imperialist pursuits, coming to see herself as the righteous arm of God extending like a dreadful shadow across the nations (Callan 15). Britain’s sense of superiority becomes blatantly clear in her invasion of Ireland. 12th-century Ireland was a nation that, seemingly, was indistinguishable from the white, Christian nation of Britain herself. Since there were no obvious racial justifications for the British invasion of Ireland, the Crown conjured up religious objections to Ireland’s practice of Christianity to justify their imperialist aims (2). It is against this historical backdrop that cultural materialism, and Joyce, seeks to untangle Irish history and literature. By painting the Irish as “Christians in name, pagans in fact”, the British set the stage for what would become the impetus for all future colonial endeavors in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas (3, 13). In Britain’s estimation, the Irish were “a savage and sacrilegious race, hostile to God and humanity” (3). Britain’s disposition of religious and ethnic superiority towards other nations, a disposition that was ‘tested’ in Ireland, would fuel Britain’s colonial efforts around the world. Indeed, Ireland became “the laboratory of nations”, thus determining the course for the colonial escapades that were to come in the following centuries (Carter Lecture 10).

In the wake of Britain’s colonial invasion of Ireland, the demographics of the nation slowly began to shift. Britain initiated the settlement of the northernmost parts of Ireland with English speaking Protestants, meanwhile the southern and western portions of Ireland remained largely Gaelic-speaking Catholics. Such a contrast sparked an us and them mentality between the Irish and the English, a division that still exists to this very day between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (Callan 10). Indeed, during the construction of the Titanic in early 1900s Belfast, Protestant upper-management at the shipyards wore lead-lined bowler hats in the event that bolts and rivets were dropped ‘accidentally’ on their heads by their Catholic employees (Holland and Sandbrook 5:00). After the Titanic disaster, there was a report circulating Belfast about Protestant ship workers stripping a Catholic co-worker naked and roasting him over a fire until he was eventually rescued by fellow Catholics (40:00). Such incidents were not uncommon in Belfast’s Harland and Wolff Shipyard which employed nearly 11,000 workers during Titanic’s construction - thus embodying a melting pot of Irish and English cultural tension. Historians Holland and Sandbrook have argued that, though it is only a sliver of Irish history, the years of Titanic’s construction in Belfast and her eventual fate can be seen as a rich metaphor for not only industrial Europe’s imminent descent into global war, but indeed a metaphor for Ireland’s own imminent eruption into chaos (2:50). Titanic was not only being built during Irish Home Rule political agitations, but it was being constructed in a particular part of Belfast that increasingly became symbolic of the vast cultural and religious divides between Catholic and Protestant Irishmen (2:35). Though Belfast was originally founded as being Scottish-English, with the sudden rise in industrialization, of which Belfast became the beating heart in Ireland, the city began to absorb more and more Irish-Catholics from the rural countryside and the west of Ireland (38:20). The thread of tension and emerging modernist ideology that weaves through the story of Titanic is the very thread that can be traced back into Irish antiquity. To this very day, tourists in Belfast can buy t-shirts that say: “Titanic: Built by Irishmen, sunk by an Englishman” (Holland and Sandbrook 3:50). Indeed, is that not the very story of Ireland itself? A vessel built and honed for centuries by Irishmen, only to be sunk into chaos by the English.

In The Dead, Gabriel expresses complicated feelings not just about Ireland, but about the west of Ireland in particular. On the cusp of their earlier conversation, Miss Ivors asks Gabriel if he and Gretta would like to join her on an excursion to the Aran Isles in the west of Ireland (Joyce 163). According to Miss Ivors, this would be a splendid idea, particularly because Gabriel’s wife, Gretta, is from Connacht, an almost entirely western province of Ireland (Joyce 163; Brown 270). Gabriel, however, has no desire to journey ‘further into’ the depths of Ireland, for he already has plans to further explore the continent (Joyce 163). When pressed by Miss Ivors as to why he refuses to learn his country’s language and explore her lands, Gabriel confesses that “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” (164).

In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus, a literary proxy for Joyce, also expresses a growing disgust for Mother Ireland. In the mind of Joyce, the romanticized notion of Mother Ireland as popularized by Yeats was “the green sluggish bile” that was causing her nation’s death (Joyce 296). Joyce was convicted that a blind loyalty to a residual and dying vision of Ireland was not conducive to the blossoming of Irish nationality, but rather a virus that needed to be torn up from an already sick and rotting liver.

W.B. Yeats, however, had a very different view of Ireland. Indeed, the ideological divide between Joyce and Yeats can be seen in the early 20th-century divide between Dublin and Belfast. Whereas Belfast was quickly becoming the innovative metropole of Ireland with the city’s heavy focus on industrialization, Dublin’s wealth lay in her ability to trade in the nation’s natural resources (Holland and Sandbrook 35:25). Belfast was leaning into the future of modernity, like Joyce, while Dublin found her prosperity in Ireland herself, not unlike Yeats. This contrast can yet again be poetically displayed in the story of the Titanic. During the ship’s construction, it was said that Irishmen visiting Belfast, particularly from the west of Ireland, were struck by the city’s alien-like nature when compared to the rest of Ireland. Indeed, Belfast was described by other Irishmen as “a terrifying temple to industrial modernity” (37:40). The Titanic, the jewel of Belfast, represented a tremendous “investment in modernity”, perfectly encapsulating the speed, vitality, and sleekness of the future that Joyce so desperately desired for Ireland (7:40, 14:35). However, to Yeats, the raw brutality of the industrialized future pushing against the borders of Ireland represented a terrifying future - indeed, “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born” (Yeats 347).

In an effort to quell the march of modernity, Yeats looked to the west of Ireland. Just as the roaring ironworks and shipyards of Belfast represented an emerging and almost altogether dominant ideology in Ireland, the Aran Islands to the west represented the residual remains of an ancient Celtic past. Yeats held that Ireland’s future lay not in looking ahead, but in looking behind to an ancient past - isolating the forgotten remnants of the past to forge a new future. This inspired Yeats’ dedication to begin the Irish Literary Revival and moreover, his immense interest in the Aran Islands (Carter Lecture 7). It is worth noting that Joyce stands in direct contrast to the aims of the Irish Literary Revival - indeed, he is utterly determined to stand alone (Roche 10). This cultural isolation of Joyce’s, the struggle of a man without an identity, becomes manifest in his character Stephen from Ulysses. Joyce’s exclusion from the halls of Irish society by Yeats “represents Stephen’s social exclusion from the cliques of the Literary Revival” and in this way mirrors “Joyce’s Ibsenite resolve to stand apart and alone” (11).

By focusing on residual cultures to the west, Yeats hoped to, like Hamlet, hold a “mirror up to nation” by creating a kind of Celtic Shakespeare (Roche 9-10). In Yeats’ work to revive Irish literature, theater, and culture, he was attempting to draw a parallel between 20th-century Ireland and the height of English art during the time of the Renaissance (9). Oddly enough, despite Yeats’ insistence to remove Ireland from British influences, there are striking similarities “between the formation of the drama of the English Renaissance and that of the Irish” (9). This is reflective of the vast overlap between dominant, emerging, and residual ideologies throughout history. Nevertheless, Yeats recognized that literature contained within itself the ability to both give an image to one’s affections, while also being able to direct the national narrative from residual cultures to emergent and, possibly, to make these cultures dominant.

The Aran Islands to the west, that place which drives Gabriel sick, is precisely the place that Yeats looked to during the Irish Literary Revival. For Yeats, the cultures of the Aran Islands represented a pure and untouched Ireland, one that he longed to bring from residual to dominant within Ireland. In an effort to expand the Irish Literary Revival’s scope, Yeats dispatched poet John Millington Synge to the Aran Islands to draw from the yet untapped cultures of the west. Yeats’ influence on Irish drama was furthered by Synge who inserted quotes by Milton and Shakespeare into nearly all his dramatic works to give them an aura of authenticity and kinship to the other great literary works of history (13-15).

However, Yeats’ romanticized view of Ireland can be best understood by examining his dramatic play, Cathleen ni Houlihan. In Irish tradition, Kathleen Ni Houlihan was a mythical symbol of Ireland itself, often represented as a matronly figure (Carter Lecture 1). This female representation of Ireland is to embody the character and qualities of all that Ireland represents - her strength, solidarity, and sovereignty. However, the characterization of Kathleen Ni Houlihan will largely depend on who is doing the writing. Namely, the writer’s view of Ireland will impact their depiction of her, thus why she can take the form of a motherly figure, a young woman, or even an old hag. In the case of Joyce, Kathleen Ni Houlihan is reduced to that of an old woman selling milk in Ulysses (Carter). But for Yeats, Ireland was no mere milkmaid. Indeed, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood… Her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance” (Joyce 20). In Cathleen ni Houlihan, Yeats’ symbol of Ireland begins as an old lady, only to transform at the end of the play into something far fiercer and more beautiful. Indeed, Cathleen first appears to Michael and his family as “an old woman coming down the road” seeking shelter, rest, and more men for her cause (Yeats 422). In her words, as the very vessel of Ireland, “many a man has died for love of me” (427). Yeats was effectively calling his fellow Irishmen to action. Yeats, like Cathleen ni Houlihan, is luring young men to the aid of Ireland from the exploitation of the outside world - urging them to give up every iota of themselves (428). As Cathleen’s hooks begin to sink deeper and deeper into Michael, she is suddenly transformed before his eyes from an old and beggarly woman into “a young girl” with “the walk of a queen” (431). Yeats did not resent his Irish heritage nor the past that crafted her into the nation that she was, and so his depiction of her in Cathleen ni Houlihan as a fierce warrior is completely in line with his sentiment that Ireland’s strength rested in her past. Yeats, like Michael, is casting from himself the young bride offered him in the form of modernity and becomes intoxicated by the distant music of Ireland’s past.

However, Yeats’ infatuation with an ancient Ireland had its share of reservations. As tensions within Ireland began to mount after the first World War, disaster struck in 1916. The Easter Rising, an armed insurrection initiated by Irish Republicans against the British, was a terrible failure - culminating in the loss of many Irish men and women. Shortly after the rebellion, Yeats penned his famous poem, Easter 1916, wherein he laments the loss of life and bloodshed: “What is it but nightfall? / No, no, not night but death; / Was it needless death after all?” (349). Just as Cathleen had so enchanted Michael, presumably to his very death, Yeats too began to fear that his play had a similar effect upon the men of Ireland. Indeed, had his play “changed utterly” the Irish consciousness? Is it possible that in Yeats’ war against modernity, a new and “terrible beauty [was] born”?

There is a sense then, a terrible sense, that neither Yeats nor Joyce knows what to do with Ireland. On the one hand, Yeats’ visions of patriotism and romanticism very well may have contributed to the spilling of Irish blood in 1916, whereas Joyce seems to have nothing but disdain for his nation. However, with respect to Joyce, this is not the case; while his affection for Ireland may be confused, he does not hate her. In The Dead, Joyce produces his own Kathleen Ni Houlihan, of sorts, in Gabriel’s wife Gretta - a symbol not of strength and ferocity, but of sorrow, heartbreak, and division. While preparing to leave the party, Gabriel stands still “in the gloom of the hall”, the very gloom and mists of a languishing Ireland, and gazes up at his wife - as though she were the symbol of something, though he could not say what of (Joyce 182). Gretta, not unlike Michael in Yeats’ play, is entranced by the song of Bartell D’Arcy as he sings an old Irish ballad in the upper room (182). In this moment, Gabriel “asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of” (182). Indeed, is this not the very symbol of Ireland herself? A woman, young and beautiful, caught between her cosmopolitan husband and the entrancing melody of distant music, the music of her own past?

Though he cannot determine what Gretta is a symbol of in this moment, Gabriel becomes lost in this vision of his wife. Gabriel is unable to restrain himself as a “sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart… The blood went bounding along his veins” (184-185). Like Joyce, Gabriel finds himself in love with a vision of this woman despite the fact that she is entirely beyond understanding - a product of his cosmopolitan self and the very past that he loathes. For, even though Gretta is from the west of Ireland, Gabriel’s lust for her burns all the hotter, so much so that moments from their “secret life together burst like stars upon his memory” (185). Something, some new and emerging force, has taken hold of Gabriel towards Gretta and he is determined not to let the moment pass them by.

Upon leaving the party, Gabriel and Gretta make their way in the early morning hours to their hotel room. All the while, Gabriel’s heart is burning within him - the vision of his wife upon the staircase, enveloped in shadow and distant music, has stirred something within him. However, once they enter their room, the moment seems to be fading - “He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted?” (188). Indeed, amid Joyce’s love for Ireland there is the constant presence of frustration and division, a heated anger within his soul over his country’s stubbornness. When asked by her husband what is troubling her, Gretta responds in tears by saying that D’Arcy’s song reminded her of a man from her youth in Galway that used to sing that song - a man from the west of Ireland (189-190). The name of the young man was Michael Furey and, as Gretta relates, he died very young after catching a cold in the rain while professing his love to her (192). Though Michael suffered from consumption, Gretta confesses that “he died for me” (191). Michael, both in Yeats’ Cathleen ni Houlihan and Joyce’s The Dead, share the very same fate: being led to a certain death by the woman of their affections - Ireland herself. Gretta, as Joyce’s Ireland, is in a state of utter sorrow and indecision; she is married to a man of the future, Gabriel, and yet the memory of her past lover, Michael to the west, continues to beckon to her, almost as though he were a ghost. Like Joyce, Ireland is caught upon that shadowy staircase, caught between the allures of a globalized future, and the distant music of the past.

The story of a divided Ireland is very much the story of James Joyce himself. He cannot submit to Yeats’ romanticized and entirely non-existent version of a forgotten Ireland, and yet he fears what an Ireland bowing entirely to the emergence of modernity would look like - that “terrifying temple to industrial modernity” (Holland and Sandbrook 37:40). In his hubris, Yeats thought that he had Ireland figured out, only to dread that “terrible beauty” that his own pen thrust upon Ireland. Joyce, however, much like Gabriel, does not know what to make of his sorrowful and tearful wife. Gretta - and Ireland - was shifting before his very eyes, becoming a shade. Though only moments before he was burning with passion for Gretta, now “she slept as though he and she had never lived together as husband and wife” (Joyce 192-193). Nor was Gretta the same woman that Michael Furey had died for; her face now lacked the beauty that both men once knew and would have braved death for (193). Indeed, cannot the same be said not only of Gabriel and Michael, but of Yeats and Joyce? Had not Ireland changed, changed utterly?

As The Dead comes to an end, Joyce and Gabriel become nearly indistinguishable, as do Gretta and Ireland. As Joyce considers his nation, an epiphany dawns on Gabriel’s soul while he stares at his sleeping wife: “a strange friendly pity for her entered his soul” (193). What if, Joyce wonders, Ireland’s place is upon that shadowy staircase? Is it possible that Ireland’s path forward lies not in only a cosmopolitan future or the distant music of her past, but in both? As Joyce and Gabriel consider this woman to whom so much of their souls are bound, they become aware of “the vast hosts of the dead”, those Irish souls who came before speaking from “that other region” (194). Ireland is not binary; she cannot be divided quite so easily - she will not let Joyce do that to her. Her voice, mingled with the lament of the dead that “had one time reared and lived” within her, penetrates the hearts of Joyce and Gabriel (194). At this moment, the world is not pressing in on Ireland, but she seems to be pressing in on the world. Indeed, she is pressing in on Joyce also. He can no longer ignore the voices of history, the voice of Ireland’s ghosts, as they fall upon his memory. The descent of her dead, like snow falling, soft as distant music, scatters through the universe, “upon all the living and the dead” (194). Indeed, Joyce’s running from Ireland was now over, “The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward” (194).

---

Reference:

Brown, Terence. “Notes.” Dubliners, edited by Seamus Deane, Centennial Edition, Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 207-275.

Callan, Maeve. “A Savage and Sacrilegious Race, Hostile to God and Humanity.” The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, vol. 49, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1-23.

Carter, Kathryn. “Lecture 1: Ireland in Literature.” EN-420K-BR: Ireland in Literature, 9 January 2024, Wilfrid Laurier University. Lecture.

Carter, Kathryn. “Lecture 7: Contested Ireland.” EN-420K-BR: Ireland in Literature, 27 February 2024, Wilfrid Laurier University. Lecture.

Carter, Kathryn. “Lecture 10: An Overview of Literary Theories.” EN-420K-BR: Ireland in Literature, 19 March 2024, Wilfrid Laurier University. Lecture.

Holland, Tom, and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts. “Titanic: The Tragedy Begins (Part 1).” The Rest is History, episode 427, 10 March 2024, Goalhanger Podcasts. Accessed on Apple Podcasts.

Holland, Tom, and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts. “Titanic: Kings of the World (Part 2).” The Rest is History, episode 428, 11 March 2024, Goalhanger Podcasts. Accessed on Apple Podcasts.

Joyce, James. “Araby.” Dubliners, edited by Seamus Deane, Centennial Edition, Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 19-24.

Joyce, James. “The Dead.” Dubliners, edited by Seamus Deane, Centennial Edition, Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 151-194.

Joyce, James. “Ulysses.” Irish Writing, edited by Stephen Regan, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008, pp. 293-314.

Roche, Anthony. “‘Mirror up to Nation’: Synge and Shakespeare.” Irish University Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 2015, pp. 9–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24576891. Accessed 10 Apr. 2024.

Sir Gawain Poet. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Translated by Burton Raffel, Signet Classic, 2001.

Yeats, William Butler. “Cathleen ni Houlihan.” Irish Writing, edited by Stephen Regan, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008, pp. 421-431.

Yeats, William Butler. “Easter 1916.” Irish Writing, edited by Stephen Regan, Oxford World’s Classics, 2008, pp. 347-349.