SOURCE: “Duffy's Last Supper: Food, Language, and the Failure of Integrative Processes in ‘A Painful Case,’” in Irish Renaissance Annual, Vol. 4, 1983, pp. 118-27.

In the following essay, Tucker discusses the relationship of food and religious ritual in James Joyce's story “A Painful Case.”

Any discussion of James Joyce's “A Painful Case” comes up against three troublesome concerns. First, the story is one that Joyce considered one of the two weakest in Dubliners.¹ Second, it contains a considerable amount of autobiographical detail lifted directly from the diary of his brother Stanislaus.² Debate over whether this material was well assimilated has led to consideration of the third problem, the seemingly disparate clusters of images to be found in the story. These images—mainly religious and gastronomic—have not always served to clarify meaning, partly because the story is also concerned with the use of language and the dilemma of a...