SOURCE: Aitken, D. J. F. “Dramatic Archetypes in Joyce's ‘Exiles.’” Modern Fiction Studies 4, no. 1 (spring 1958): 42-52.

In the following essay, Aitken discusses the relationship between Exiles and Joyce's Ulysses.

James Joyce's play, Exiles, is clearly an additional exploration of the situation which confronts Stephen Dedalus at the beginning of Ulysses. Its hero, like Stephen, has just returned from his self-imposed exile, presumably prepared to forge the uncreated conscience of his race. He is now faced with the problem of reconciling his hard-won freedom and the conflicting necessity that he continue to live among men, to communicate with them, and to act upon them. Exiles focuses exclusively upon this situation, sharpening it dramatically by posing Richard between the poles of his stern ideal and his sharp yearning for union with his wife and friends, and expressing it in his curious aspiration for total union in utter nakedness.

This theme...