Drama Criticism | Exiles, James Joyce - R. A. Maher (essay date 1972)

R. A. Maher (essay date 1972)

SOURCE: Maher, R.A. “James Joyce's Exiles: The Comedy of Discontinuity.” James Joyce Quarterly 9, no. 4 (summer 1972): 461–74.

[In the following essay, Maher compares Exiles to Hamlet and examines the relationships of the characters in Exiles.]

Joyce described Exiles as “three cat and mouse acts” (Exiles 123); he also called it “a comedy in three acts” (Letters I, 78). The comedy of Exiles will not be felt, however, if we mistake the play for a drama of ideas. If we do, we are the mouse being teased by Joyce. The play is an extraordinarily tactile and auditory play: it shows everything and states nothing. Only if we assiduously avoid trying to make the play fit into a discursive framework, into some message Joyce is developing progressively act by act, will we hear and feel the comedy.

Furthermore, if we focus only on Richard as the hero of...

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