SOURCE: Fergusson, Francis. “Joyce's Exiles.” In The Human Image in Dramatic Literature, pp. 72–84. New York: Doubleday, 1957.

In the following essay, Fergusson examines the place of Exiles in Joyce's oeuvre and from an historical perspective.

Exiles was written during the spring of 1914, the year in which Dubliners was published, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man completed, and Ulysses begun. It is a play of the end of youth, or the knowing threshold of maturity,

En l'an trentiesme de mon aage Que toutes mes hontes j'ay beues. 

Joyce was in complete possession of himself and his literary powers. He paused for a last look at the soul which Stephen Daedalus had been impiously constructing, a vehicle winged for the exploration of new and perhaps forbidden realms, a fresh “conscience of his race.” The Portrait shows us the process of construction; Exiles gives us the completed masterpiece. The timeless...