MICHAEL ARRHENIUS

DIT, AUNGIER STREET

THE DEAD

By James Joyce

A Study Of The

Greatest Love Story Ever Written


INTRODUCTION

The Dead - The greatest love story ever written! How can that be? Is it really true that measly 35 pages can be looked upon as greater than the great love stories we so often talk about, like Romeo & Juliet, Deidre & Naisi, or nowadays even Titanic? I was intrigued by that question and I wanted to read The Dead, then see it and then read it again, just to see what it is that makes this such a great love story. I was stunned, amused and finally glad for what the story showed me. It's the first time that I've ever read anything of Mr. James Joyce but the feeling that The Dead left me with will live on in me and make me pick up more of his famous works.

JAMES JOYCE

James Augustus Aloysius Joyce was born on the 2nd of February in 1882. He was born at 41 Brighton Square in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the oldest of 10 children and while growing up the family was never a stranger to poverty and they experienced a severe economic and social disadvantage.

Reading had been a favourite pleasure for Joyce since early years and even though his economic disadvantage, he still managed to attend the Jesuit schools Conglowes Wood College, Belvedere College and University College, Dublin. His greatest influences were Dante, Hauptmann, Yeats and Ibsen, to whom he in 1901 even sent a complimentary letter.

In 1902, only 20 years old, Joyce escaped the "close- and narrow-mindness of Irish Catholism" and went to Paris, where he spent a year out of his life writing poetry while still living in severe poverty. Due to a fatal illness of his mother Mary Jane Joyce, James Joyce returned to Ireland in April of 1903. Joyce only stayed for about a year though but before leaving he met his wife-to-be, Ms Nora Barnacle from Galway, who also came with him, and they seldom returned to Ireland after this. Although they didn't get married until 1931, Joyce and his wife had two children, one son and one daughter.

Growing recognition for Joyce's work, such as Dubliners (1914), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), which showed "exciting new forms of literature revolutionalized the structure of the novel", left Joyce to be regarded as the greatest literature genius of the twentieth century, with even men like Eliot and Hemingway looking at him in great respect But despite all this glory, Joyce still struggled against poverty and later also a severe eye condition - Glaucoma. Joyce was also greatly troubled by his daughter Lucia's mental illness. All this was in the end too much for the great artist and finally, at the age of 59, Joyce died. He died on the 13th of January 1941 in Zurich, which is where he's now buried at the Fluntern Cemetery.

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THE DEAD - THE STORY

The Dead is one out of 15, originally 12 though, short stories written by James Joyce collected and published in the book Dubliners. It's a story about a gathering of people, the Misses Morkan's annual dance, occurring around Christmas-time in Dublin 1904. The hosts for the party are the two elderly sisters Julia and Kate Morkan, and also to their help their niece Mary Jane. The gathering takes place in the Morkan's house on Usher Island, where people are invited not only to a good meal but also to perform and to be ...

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