A01=Coilin Owens
analysis
Author_Coilin Owens
Category=DSBH
Category=DSK
Category=DSRC
close reading
Coilin Owens
critical work
criticism
Dubliners
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
essential
James Joyce
Painful Case
scholar
student
study
Product details
- ISBN 9780813054711
- Weight: 380g
- Dimensions: 151 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 Aug 2017
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In order to demonstrate that one story from the Dubliners is not only a turning point in that book but also a microcosm of a wide range of important Joycean influences and preoccupations, Cóilín Owens examines the dense intertextuality of "A Painful Case." Assuming the position of the ideal contemporary Irish reader that Joyce might have anticipated, Owens argues that the main character, James Duffy, is a "spoiled priest," emotionally arrested by his guilt at having rejected the call to the priesthood. Duffy's intellectual life thereafter progresses through German idealism to eventual nihilism. The contrast of nihilist thought and Christian belief is Owens's main focus, and he demonstrates how this dichotomy is evident at various points in the life of James Duffy. From this springboard, Owens constructs a larger discussion of Joyce's cultural influences, including Schopenhauer, Wagner, Tolstoy, and others. He considers many other complex interrelationships that inform Joyce's text--theology, philosophy, music, opera, literary history, Irish cultural history, and Joyce's own poetry--and offers detailed elucidations informed by historical, geographical, linguistic, and biographical information.
Cóilín Owens is professor emeritus of English at George Mason University, coeditor of Irish Drama, 1900-1980, and editor of Family Chronicles: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent.
