Flynn’s chapter argues for the crucial role of nineteenth-century French naturalism in the conception and evolution of Joyce’s Dubliners. Specifically, it argues that Joyce’s ambition to correct the development of his country through representing the debilitation of its capital city is modelled on Émile Zola’s aim in his naturalist, twenty-novel series Le Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893) to present and diagnose the pathologies of the Third Republic through representing several generations of a diseased family. However, in their indirection, Joyce’s stories expand upon an ambiguity intrinsic to naturalism – the subjectivity inherent in any would-be objective perception of reality – an ambiguity developed to comic effect by the second-generation naturalist, Guy de Maupassant in the story “Auprès d’un Mort” (Beside Schopenhauer’s Corpse). The chapter argues that the first story of Dubliners, “The Sisters,” is inspired by this minutely observed, disenchanted, and enigmatic story. The chapter closes by looking at the final scene of “The Dead” to argue that Joyce turns the dead end of naturalism into a test for an Irish readership.

Alison Searle examines the formal procedures connected to compassion in James Shirley’s The Sisters (licensed 26 April 1642). She focuses on the problems posed by outsiders: the compassion of bandits dwelling as an anti-society in the woodlands, the recurring trope of the vagrant/beggar/gypsy/actor used to interrogate histrionic techniques deployed to evoke compassion and the complexities of policing the performance of compassion within the early modern Protestant state. Shirley’s play elucidates the ways in which compassion could create new, dangerous communities, as well as exposing the limits of existing groups. By postulating the ruler as a potential object of compassion, the play proleptically examines one of the most pressing political questions of the English Civil War: can the monarch be an object of compassion? The play’s invitation to feel pity for the plight of the king creates a political space for subversive action. If one can empathise with the king, is he a potential peer?