Grace (short story)

Short story by James Joyce

"Grace"

Short story by James Joyce
Country| Ireland
Language| English
Genre(s)| short story
Publication
Published in| Dubliners
Publication type| Collection
Media type| Print
Publication date| 1914
Chronology

A Mother |
The Dead

|

"Grace" is a short story by James Joyce written toward the end of 1905[1] and published in his 1914 collection Dubliners.

## Plot summary

[edit]

The story begins with a man unconscious after falling down the stairs in a pub after heavy drinking. A friend of his, Mr. Power, finds him, reveals he is named Tom Kernan, and takes him home to his wife. Kernan is a salesman who once possessed an easy charm and manner but has since descended into alcoholism. An injury to his tongue sustained during the fall keeps Kernan in bed.

Two days later, he is visited by his friends Power, M'Coy, and Cunningham. The friends have concocted a plan to get Kernan to attend a Catholic retreat with them. The four discuss many matters and finally settle upon religion. The friends mention attending a confessional retreat at a Jesuit church and invite Kernan along. He does not respond to the idea at first. The conversation shows a superficial understanding of the Catholic faith, and the friends make many comical errors about the Church.

The scene shifts to the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street where all listen to a priest's sermon.

## Analysis

[edit]

Kernan's gin-drinking in the novel Ulysses (which is set on 16 June 1904) indicates the failure of his friends' plan. Hugh Kenner found "Grace" "as subversive a story as any Dubliners contains: the story against which Irish Catholic opinion should have expended its animus".[2] According to Stanislaus Joyce, the three parts of the story recall the tripartite structure of Dante's Divine Comedy ("inferno-purgatorio-paradiso").[3] The word "grace" is used in each part, but not in the religious sense until the last sentence of the story, and it has been argued that Joyce initially suppresses the doctrine only to have it equated with a business practice by a priest in a church, to ridicule the belief that divine grace is available there.[4]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ A. Nicholas Fargnoli, Michael Patrick Gillespie. James Joyce A to Z. Oxford University Press, 1995. Page 60.
2. ^ Kenner, Hugh (1978). Joyce's Voices. University of California Press. p. 12. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
3. ^ Thomas J. Rice. Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity. University of Illinois Press, 1997. ISBN 9780252065835. Page 34.
4. ^ Lang, Frederick K. (1993). "Ulysses" and the Irish God. Lewisburg, London and Toronto: Bucknell University Press, Associated University Presses. pp. 182–83. ISBN 0838751504. Retrieved 28 February 2024.

* Joyce, James. Dubliners (London: Grant Richards, 1914)
* Allen, Walter. "The Short Story in English" (Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1981)

## External links

[edit]

* Dubliners public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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James Joyce

Works|

| Novels|

* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
* Ulysses (1922)
* Finnegans Wake (1939)

|

Short stories|

* Dubliners (1914, written 1904–07)
* "The Sisters"
* "Eveline"
* "After the Race"
* "An Encounter"
* "Araby"
* "The Boarding House"
* "Counterparts"
* "Clay"
* "A Painful Case"
* "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"
* "A Mother"
* "Two Gallants"
* "A Little Cloud"
* "Grace"
* "The Dead"

Play|

* Exiles (1918)

Poetry|

* Chamber Music (1907)
* Pomes Penyeach (1927)

Posthumous
publications|

* Stephen Hero (1944)
* Giacomo Joyce (1968)
* The Cats of Copenhagen (2012)
* Finn's Hotel (2013)

Adaptations|

* Ulysses in Nighttown (1958 play)
* Ulysses (1967 film)
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977 film)
* Ulysses (1982 broadcast)
* The Dead (1987 film)
* James Joyce's The Dead (1999 musical)
* Bloom (2003 film)
* Waywords and Meansigns (2015–2017 audio)

Related|

* Harriet Shaw Weaver
* Obscenity trial of Ulysses in The Little Review
* United States v. One Book Called Ulysses
* Bellsybabble
* Bloomsday
* James Joyce Award
* James Joyce Centre
* James Joyce Tower and Museum
* Museum of Literature Ireland
* Quark
* Volta Cinematograph
* Zürich James Joyce Foundation

Scholars of|

* Anthony Burgess
* Frank Delaney
* Richard Ellmann
* Alan Warren Friedman
* Francisco García Tortosa
* Stuart Gilbert
* Adaline Glasheen
* Michael Groden
* Hugh Kenner
* Ira Nadel
* David Norris
* William H. Quillian
* C. George Sandulescu
* Fritz Senn
* John Simpson
* Ronald Symond
* William York Tindall
* José María Valverde
* Ernst von Glasersfeld

Academic
works about|

* Hamlet and the New Poetic: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot
* James Joyce (biography)
* James Joyce Quarterly
* Joysprick
* Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
* A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake

Family|

* Nora Barnacle (wife)
* Lucia Joyce (daughter)
* John Stanislaus Joyce (father)
* Stanislaus Joyce (brother)
* Stephen James Joyce (grandson)
* Mary Gertrude Joyce (sister)

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