To understand the interplay between the 1907 story and the 1987 film, I turn to Prof Kevin Barry’s brief, lucid 2001 study, published by Cork University Press. Anachronism is impossible to avoid we cannot do anything but look through the eyes of our own time. Who are we to say which is which (although I’m in the Count Dracula camp)? But all of these interpretations are anachronistic, as is Huston’s film, which among other things inserts a mention of James Connolly that would have mystified Joyce at the time. when he claims that ‘an actual space for liberation opens in the west of Miss Ivors and Michael Furey.” But Seamus Deane endorses the views of Cheng, Gibbons and Nolan. “Joep Leerson agrees with John Wilson Foster that the journey westward is deathly, Michael Furey another Count Dracula, and the past a nightmare from which no one can escape.

“The end of The Dead is a political Rorschach blot for Joyceans,” wrote Elizabeth Butler Cullingford. And it wouldn’t be a proper Irish Christmas story if it hadn’t generated a heated political argument. The events that take place during and after the party at the Misses Morkans’ on Usher’s Island can be described as a Christmas ghost story, a Christmas weather story, a Christmas nostalgia story, arguably a Christmas feminist story and, of course, a story about a Christmas party. Perhaps unwisely, the Irish Film Institute has asked me to say a few words at its annual screening of the film this January 6th.īoth film and book contain multitudes – far too many to explore here – but on this Christmas Eve it seems worth reasserting one simple, indisputable fact: The Dead is Ireland’s richest and most memorable piece of Christmas art. It’s the time of year when I tend to bend the ear of anyone foolish enough to listen to my thoughts on James Joyce’s Epiphany-set masterpiece, The Dead, and also (if they haven’t escaped yet) on John Huston’s 1987 film adaptation, on which I worked in a very junior capacity.

The 12 days of Christmas commence tomorrow and draw to a close on Friday, January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany (or, if you prefer, Nollaig na mBan).

The dead james joyce epiphany