Joyce’s repudiation of Catholic Ireland and his countering declaration of artistic independence are well-known and integral features of his life-long dedication to writing. The most important of Joyce’s Irish predecessors was the poet James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849), whose tragic life was represented by Joyce as an emblem of the fate of the Irish artist, betrayed through identification of himself with his country. Joyce’s obsession with betrayal manifests itself in the lectures he delivered on Mangan, in Dublin in 1902 and in Trieste in 1907. Wherever he looked, in Irish political or literary history, he found betrayal. The great political crisis that dominated his early life – the fall of Parnell – governed this reading of his country’s past and helped him define the nature of the embattled relationship between him and his Irish audience. Parnell was, in Joyce’s view, a heroic spirit brought low by his own people, who listened to Parnell’s plea that they should not throw him to the English wolves.