2026/05/31 by Raunak Kumar, Aruni Mahapatra · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Giambattista Vico and Joyce #Historical Art and Culture Studies #Modernist Literature and Criticism
paper · doi:10.1080/0895769x.2026.2680698
openalex publication_date 2026/05/31 · openalex created_date 2026/06/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/18
There are two published versions of James Joyce’s short story “The Sisters,” and we have come to believe that Joyce added much to the first version only to remove certainties of meaning. A close analysis of his revisions reveals a crucial turning point in his early aesthetic method, most notably the insertion of the boy-narrator’s dream of the dead priest. This article argues that Joyce engineered this dream sequence utilizing the structural blueprint of his early manuscript dream-epiphany “The Two Sisters.” A comparative close reading of the story and the epiphany demonstrates that both texts share an identical narrative mechanism: a pattern of recognition and reversal in which a sudden, disorienting realization of a revered figure’s frailty (Ibsen and Father Flynn) triggers a profound desacralization of their story. Ultimately, this article attempts to show how Joyce translated the abstract psychological realism of his first published version of “The Sisters” into a historically grounded narrative about Dublin’s social problem through the form of “epiclet.”