Dumas, Alexandre (père) | Don MacLennan (essay date 1988)
Don MacLennan (essay date 1988)
SOURCE: "Metastasis; or Dumas, Joyce and the Dark Avenger," in English Studies in Africa: A Journal of the Humanities 31, No. 2, 1988, pp. 119-27.
[In the following essay, MacLennan identifies evidence of The Count of Monte Cristo 's influence on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.]
The count bowed, and stepped back. "Do you refuse?" said Mercédès, in a tremulous voice. "Pray, excuse me, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "but I never eat Muscatel grapes."1
It is obvious that Joyce read and digested Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo, and that he selected Monte Cristo (Edmond Dantès) as an archetypal hero, a model on which the unheroic Stephen2 initially models his personality and whom he unconsciously adopts as a catalyst for his ultimate rebellion. Both novels are about revenge: Dumas's lengthily, Joyce's...
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