Prologue: Stephen Dedalus's Hell

This chapter explores the evaporation, in effect, of real assent to beliefs in the afterlife, especially in hell. Starting from the author's personal experiences of Catholicism before Vatican II, it goes on to consider whether in the modern world such beliefs are inevitably entertained with ironic overtones. The hell sermons in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce are of exceptional interest here, for Joyce is able to deploy irony toward a boy's belief in hell, and the Catholic traditions that stand behind it, while holding back from satire.

This chapter explores the evaporation, in effect, of real assent to beliefs in the afterlife, especially in hell. Starting from the author's personal experiences of Catholicism before Vatican II, it goes on to consider whether in the modern world such beliefs are inevitably entertained with ironic overtones. The hell sermons in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce are of exceptional interest here, for Joyce is able to deploy irony toward a boy's belief in hell, and the Catholic traditions that stand behind it, while holding back from satire.