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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Allusions
Explanation and Analysis—Battle of the Boyne:
In a subtle example of allusion, Joyce includes in the story the fact that Father Flynn died on the 1st of July. July 1st was a significant day in Irish history—on that day in 1690, the forces of the Protestant King of England William III and those of the ousted Catholic King James II fought over who would rule England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ultimately, King William’s soldiers prevailed, resulting in the continued Protestant ascendancy in Britain and the Catholic Church’s loss of power. This conflict came to be known as the Battle of the Boyne because it took place near the River Boyne in Ireland.
It is likely that Joyce decided to have Father Flynn die on July 1st to draw a connection between these two events. As a person who was deeply critical of the power that the Catholic Church was able to regain in Ireland in the centuries after the Battle of the Boyne, Joyce was likely signaling his desire for the Catholic Church to lose that power once again. It is important to note that Joyce was not Protestant and was likewise not a proponent of England’s rule over Ireland, so he's not implying with this allusion that he believed the Protestant Crown should defeat the Church, but simply that the Catholic Church had its own problems.
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Allusions
Explanation and Analysis—The Freeman’s General:
When Father Flynn’s sister Eliza is telling the narrator’s aunt about all of the labor she and her sister Nannie had to perform to prepare for their brother's memorial service, she includes an allusion to an Irish Nationalist newspaper, as seen in the following passage:
Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what we’d have done at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two candlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the Freeman’s General and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery and poor James’s insurance.
The Freeman’s General is perhaps a colloquial way of referring to the Freeman’s Journal, the leading Nationalist newspaper in Ireland that ran from 1763 to 1924. As a Nationalist news source, the Journal published articles and notices related to the movement for an Ireland free from England’s colonial rule. Due to the Catholic Church’s ties to the Nationalist movement, it was common for notices about priest’s deaths (and other goings-on of the Church) to appear in its pages.
With this allusion, Joyce is signaling how the corrupt Father Flynn—a stand-in for the Church as a whole in the story—is linked to the Nationalist movement. While Joyce was raised by Catholic and Nationalist parents, as he became older he developed deep critiques of both institutions for their corruption and ineffective leadership.
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