In the following excerpt, Eakin and Gerber provide an overview of Moore's short stories and maintain that the concept of "in minor keys" seems to be his "way of designating a story in which he implies a significant moral idea marked by a subdued or underwritten ending."
Kennelly is an Irish poet, critic, novelist, and educator. In the following essay, which was first published in England in 1968, he perceives the theme of loneliness as integral to Moore's short fiction.
Newell is an American critic and educator. In the following essay, he discusses the similarities of thirteen stories he classifies as "the artist stories, " focusing on Moore's perception of the artist in Irish society.
Not that Joyce was so staggeringly original as he appears in books by students of Joyce. After all, it was only twelve months before (Joyce began Dubliners) that George Moore had published The Untitled Field, and it takes a student of Joyce to ignore a simple fact like that.
Martin is an Irish critic and educator. In the following essay, he finds the themes of social and spiritual bleakness in the story "Julia Cahill's Curse" representative of Moore's short fiction in The Untilled Field.
In the following essay, Newell discusses the four short stories that comprise the "wedding gown" group, pieces linked by their non-polemic treatment of Irish life, maintaining that these stories "embody not only the strangeness and pathos of human existence but also varieties, both literal and figurative, of 'exile ' and 'vision. ' "
In the following essay on The Lake, Malkan finds that the protagonist's search for personal fulfillment in the face of existential monotony is tied to his self-absorption and renunciation of social obligations.
Duffus was an American novelist, critic, and nonfiction writer. In the following favorable review, he provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Celibate Lives.
