Returns of "The Dead": Paul Muldoon's Adaptations of "The Dead"

The essay discusses two adaptations by Paul Muldoon of Joyce's "The Dead," one unpublished manuscript dating from 1984, and one he co-wrote with his wife, the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz. As the interrelations between Muldoon's two versions of the short story are traced to the poet's other engagements with Joyce's oeuvre, particularly in his To Ireland, I, the essay seeks to explore the ends to which "The Dead" is put in Muldoon's renditions, which oscillate around the various deployments of political critique. It is argued here that Joyce's allusive-elusive text, in Muldoon's hands, pays increased attention to the central conflicts of modern Irish history.