UNIT 2—TWENTIETH-CENTURY SHORT STORIES

George Moore

➢ SELF-STUDY ACTIVITIES and RESEARCH

o In LION Database go to REFERENCE WORKS, search and read:

o GEORGE MOORE in Encyclopedia of the Novel.:
▪ In what period did he write? In what ways is he A precursor of
James Joyce? Is he a naturalistic or a modernist writer? What
is his relation to the Irish Literary Revival?
o Please do not confuse with THOMAS MOORE--this is an 18th- and
early 19th- c. poet and thinker very well known in Ireland. Do not get
them mixed up!!
o Search in The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature for BIG
HOUSE, a literary theme represented in Moore's story and by many
other Irish writers:
▪ What is the ascendancy? What causes its landowning decline?

o In LION Database go to the CRITICISM section.

o In The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel read the fragment
below from the chapter "Catholicism and Fiction during the Union
1801-1922".
▪ Individuality is part of modernization. What are the obstacles
to achieve this in Ireland at the end of the 19th- c., according to
the fragment?

“The nineteenth century witnessed a 'devotional revolution', an extraordinary

growth in the institutional cohesion of the Catholic Church in Ireland and in the
conformity of ordinary Irish Catholics to orthodox religious practice. (9)
However, this was not matched by an assertive advocacy of Catholicism in
fiction, except by a number of literary priests who had international experience
of the struggle between Catholicism and modernity. Ireland also experienced
modernisation, largely as a result of changes to the land system, but it was of a
special form which favoured the farming family rather than the urban
individual. Its emphasis on collective - or at least family - identity rather than
on individual identity created a favourable environment for the Church. The
Irish Catholic cultural environment thus diverged from the European
mainstream in which urban experience and the triumph of individual
experience were prized, especially in fiction.
The situation did not favour a literary culture. Irish Catholics were not to
experience the crisis of faith in Britain brought on by biblical criticism and
Darwinism. There, Protestantism had embraced Enlightenment concepts of
knowledge and was disconcerted no longer to be able to live up to them. For
many British Victorians, the novel became at least a partial substitute for
religion. Not so in Ireland, where such a powerful religious narrative was
available throughout society and where supernatural reality remained almost
palpable.”
Self-Study Questions for Analysis of Short-Stories

GEORGE MOORE “Home Sickness”

1. Analyze the way pronouns and proper names are used by the narrator to
address the main character throughout his evolution as a character.

2. “Health” is a main issue in the story. James Bryden goes back to Ireland in
search of health. Analyze how health is associated to the Irish way of life, to
America and to the element of nature. In what ways does this association
develop throughout the story?

3. Underline in the story and study the passages that present visual
descriptions of landscapes. How are they related to memory? Search for
verbs that describe different types of “memory” or “remembering” in the
story.

4. Why do you think the author uses the sense of the “visual” to address
Ireland’s impact on the character and “smell” for America’s? Isn’t this
peculiar?

5. Search for definitions of homesickness, nostalgia, and sense of place, and

then compare them with issues in the story.

6. Does Bryden romanticize Ireland? Do the Irish romanticize America? How

does the narrator introduce “reality of experience” to neutralize this
romanticism?

7. Think about this statement: “Margaret Dirken is Ireland”.

8. Identify, underline and analyze the passages in the story about people’s or
the community’s obedience and submission to the priest. How are the
mechanisms of fear installed in the Irish community in the story?

9. What do you think about the end of the story when Bryden is old?