• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.429-440
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• 2009

This paper does not follow the well-known critical practice of Charles Perke, Edward Brandabur and Phillip Herring who, regarding The Dead, James Joyce s earliest masterpiece, as the conclusion of Dubliners, classify Gabriel as one of the dead. Instead it concurs with such critics as William York Tindal, Kenneth Burke and Allen Tate who, interpreting The Dead as a story of Gabriel s spiritual maturation, discuss the famous snow vision at the end of the story as a signifier of his rebirth experience. A new reading of The Dead, which is the aim of this paper, examines the very processes which produce both form and content, thereby demonstrating that The Dead is a story of Gabriel s spiritual growth and that the supreme snow vision is prepared for his spirit which progresses towards a richer synthesis of life and death, a higher altitude of flight and wider horizons.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.169-188
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• 2008

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri find in women's caring/domestic labor a potential for producing affects, relationships, and forms of communication and cooperation in the family and in the community. Caring/domestic labor in their view is biopolitical in that it directly produces social relationship and forms of life. In this way, they contributed in deconstructing the fixed idea that women's caring/domestic labors are confined to the private domain rather than public one. The literary representations of women's caring/ domestic labor, however, have tended to emphasize its repetitive and confining attributes to private domains and the accompanying physical and mental alienation. Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen" and James Joyce's "Eveline" are the examples. "To Room Nineteen," an indirect manifestation of Doris Lessing's position as a Communist, criticizes the sexual distinction of domestic labor under Capitalistic ethic and describes the possible extinction of women's subjects who internalize the capitalistic ideology of bourgeois middle class nuclear family. "Eveline," the fourth work of Joyce's Dubliners, is another example to show the negative result of internalization of Catholic orthodox in which women are obligated to care and sacrifice specially through domestic and caring labor.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.487-500
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• 2010

In the history of colonization, how and to what extent the colonizer interacted with the local population differed according to race relations in specific periods. Generally speaking, social or sexual contact between two communities was tolerated when race relations were relatively relaxed. When the racial relationship became aggravated, however, such contact between the colonizer and the colonized was discouraged in order to forge and maintain ethnic solidarity. In Ireland, the colonizer's interaction with the colonized was not different from that of colonized countries in the Third World. Unlike those colonies, however, the settlers, that is, Protestants, simply could not be treated as the colonizer because they had lived in Ireland long enough to assert their Irishness. Joyce is keenly interested in intergender ethnic boundary crossings. In his works, two kinds of ethno-sexual interactions are presented from two totally different perspectives. As shown in the cases of the young lady in the street stall, Polly, Milkwoman, Sheila, and Cissy, Joyce describes the interaction of Irish women with Englishmen from a skeptical viewpoint. All of those cases demonstrate typical relationships epitomizing power relations in a colonial society. They reflect the turbulent time at the beginning of the century when Ireland had to fight with England to gain its independence. At such a transitional time, the ethnic relationship became aggravated and boundary crossings were discouraged. On the other hand, through the relationship between Stephen and Eileen, Girty and Reggy Wylie, Browne and Irish ladies, and Mr. & Mrs. Kernan, Joyce presents the interaction between Protestants and Catholics in terms of romantic or human relationships rather than power relations. From his description of those interactions, we can assume that Joyce, in the time of nation building, provided a blueprint for the future Irish nation, where Protestants and Catholics could build a nation and live harmoniously.