Abstract
This paper investigates themes of Irish nationalism in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” Drawing primarily in Joyce’s 1907 essay “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages” as a source for Joyce's political views at the time he wrote “The Dead,” I outline Joyce’s critique of both Irish nationalism and British Imperialism, which Joyce synthesized into a general contempt for Ireland’s compromised national identity. Benedict Anderson’s theory of nations as “imagined communities” provides a theoretical underpinning for Joyce’s transcendence of nationalism. I argue that both nationalist and anti-nationalist readings of “The Dead” are difficult to resolve with Joyce’s documented political views. In doing so, I diverge from the oft-repeated idea that “The Dead” praises Irish hospitality, suggesting instead that the story is critical of this bourgeois “virtue.” I then investigate Gabriel Conroy as a stand-in for Joyce’s nuanced political views and challenge scholars’ conflation of his “solicitude” with a critique of Imperialism and cultural snobbery. Favoring instead a psychological reading which harmonizes Gabriel’s anxiety with Ireland’s compromised national identity, I ultimately argue that Joyce’s story dismisses the paradigms of nationhood as meaningless for Ireland.
Issue and Volume
19.1
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Baird, Hyrum G.
(2026)
"James Joyce’s “The Dead” and the Irish Nation,"
Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 19:
Iss.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol19/iss1/5