Terry Eagleton on James Joyce's Hidden Politics and the Starveling Rabblement
James Joyce is often seen as apolitical, yet his lifelong loyalty to Charles Stewart Parnell shaped his fierce anti-clericalism and modernism. He rejected cultural nationalism and the Irish Literary Revival, viewing them as tools of oppression. Instead, Joyce championed a secular, European vision for Ireland, criticizing the alliance of Church and Empire that exploited the poor.
Ireland was a nation in which all the power and riches are in the keeping of those whose kingdom is not of this world, an island in which Caesar confesses Christ and Christ confesses Caesar that together they may wax fat upon a starveling rabblement.