Grace Notes: Religion and Music in the Fiction of Joyce and Rooney

This article examines the intertwined roles of music and religion in James Joyce’s The Dead and Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, arguing that both works locate emotional and spiritual depth not in doctrinal belief but in shared rituals and aesthetic experiences. The essay traces how religious tradition, particularly Catholicism, persists as an emotional and cultural frame even in post-faith contexts, with music emerging as a powerful medium of spiritual and affective expression. In The Dead, Joyce presents “The Lass of Aughrim” not merely as a folk song, but as a moment of secular sacrament, sparking memory, grief, and existential revelation. Rooney reanimates the same ballad within a modern, desacralized setting, using it to evoke tenderness, intimacy, and cultural continuity. Both texts demonstrate how music and religious ritual continue to provide a framework for silence, epiphany, and emotional communion, especially in a world where ontological certainties have faded. By treating music as a kind of emotional theology, Joyce and Rooney suggest that the sacred may still be encountered, not in belief, but in beauty.