Painful Case
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- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 12/19/2010 01:40 PM
- Pages: 7
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James Joyce
was an Irish novelist and poet. He is one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.
He was born in Dublin in 1882. He entered the university college, Dublin in 1898. In 1900 he began writing lyric poems. After graduation in 1902, the twenty year old Joyce went to Paris where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. Most of his adult life was spent abroad. Joyce died in Zürich in 1941
His last words were: "Does nobody understand?"
His most important works are: Dubliners (1914), a portrait of the artist as a young man (1916), a play Exiles (1918) and Ulysses (1922) and a collection of poems, Chamber music (1917)
Dubliners
published in 1914, it shows episodes of middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. The topics related in the opening stories range from the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence and the importance of sexual awakening. Joyce was 25 when he wrote this collection of short stories, among which “The Dead” is probably the most famous.
But in James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case,” Joyce portrays the main character, Mr. James Duffy’s life as being controlled by paralysis and his inability to be anything but ordinary. Joyce regarded this as “one of the two weak stories in Dubliners” and gave it as well as the other one, After the Race, special attention during his stay in Rome.
To study the comedy and the deception in this short story, I will shed light first on the title, the setting and the characters. Then I will explain how all this elements, in the course of the events, contribute to say that “a painful case” is one comedy of deception.
James Joyce’s short story, “A Painful Case” depicts the life of a Dubliner, James Duffy, at a specific period in his life. However, hidden in the lines of the text,...
was an Irish novelist and poet. He is one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.
He was born in Dublin in 1882. He entered the university college, Dublin in 1898. In 1900 he began writing lyric poems. After graduation in 1902, the twenty year old Joyce went to Paris where he worked as a journalist, teacher and in other occupations under difficult financial conditions. Most of his adult life was spent abroad. Joyce died in Zürich in 1941
His last words were: "Does nobody understand?"
His most important works are: Dubliners (1914), a portrait of the artist as a young man (1916), a play Exiles (1918) and Ulysses (1922) and a collection of poems, Chamber music (1917)
Dubliners
published in 1914, it shows episodes of middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. The topics related in the opening stories range from the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence and the importance of sexual awakening. Joyce was 25 when he wrote this collection of short stories, among which “The Dead” is probably the most famous.
But in James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case,” Joyce portrays the main character, Mr. James Duffy’s life as being controlled by paralysis and his inability to be anything but ordinary. Joyce regarded this as “one of the two weak stories in Dubliners” and gave it as well as the other one, After the Race, special attention during his stay in Rome.
To study the comedy and the deception in this short story, I will shed light first on the title, the setting and the characters. Then I will explain how all this elements, in the course of the events, contribute to say that “a painful case” is one comedy of deception.
James Joyce’s short story, “A Painful Case” depicts the life of a Dubliner, James Duffy, at a specific period in his life. However, hidden in the lines of the text,...