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Wednesday, February 25, 2026

PQ on Joyce and the state violence of evil days


Joyce and Militarism, a book cited by PQ. 

Peter Quadrino has a new piece up at his "Finnegans, Wake!" blog. The new posting is "Evil Days": Joyce and State Violence and it refers to recent events in the U.S. but mostly discusses the brutal repression by Britain when the Irish were trying to achieve independence.

As Peter explains, Joyce had quite a few friends who  were killed by the British, including in the wake of the Easter uprising. (Peter calls these killings "executions," but I think that implies more of a due process than many of the Irish rebels got). Here is Peter on one of the killings:

"One of Joyce's school friends was named George Clancy, he appears in Portrait as Davin, later he became the mayor of Limerick. He was the mayor when one night, the Black and Tans dragged him out of bed and summarily executed him in front of his family. This was in 1921. Joyce was remembering the shock of this almost 15 years later, in a letter to his son Giorgio 4 Feb 1935 he mentions "my poor friend George Clancy (Davin in Portrait). ... He was afterward Mayor of Limerick and was dragged out of bed by the Black and Tans in the night and shot in the presence of his wife." (Letters 1, Gilbert, p. 357)


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