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Auto/biografiction: Counterfeit Lives: A Taxonomy of Displacements of Fiction towards Life‐Writing

Max Saunders

in Self Impression: Life-Writing, Autobiografiction, and the Forms of Modern Literature

This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety ... More

This chapter examines the converse displacement to that considered in Chapters 3 and Chapter 4, looking instead at cases where fiction‐writers colonize the forms of life‐writing, producing a variety of fake diaries, journals, biographies, and autobiographies. It takes a different approach to most of the other chapters, consisting of brief accounts of many works rather than sustained readings of a few. A taxonomy of modern engagements with life‐writing is proposed. The chapter moves on to discuss Galton's notion of ‘composite portraiture’ as a way of thinking about the surprisingly pervasive form of the portrait‐collection. The main examples are from Ford, Stefan Zweig, George Eliot, Hesketh Pearson, Gertrude Stein, Max Beerbohm and Arthur Symons; Isherwood and Joyce's Dubliners also figure. Where Chapters 3 and Chapter 4 focused on books with a single central subjectivity, this chapter looks at texts of multiple subjectivities. It concludes with a discussion of the argument that multiple works — an entire oeuvre — should be read as autobiography.Less

Reading Joyce's Poetry against the Rest of the Canon

Marc C. Conner (ed.)

in The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsidered

This essay examines the apparent creative contradictions often noted in comparing Joyce's prose and poetry, asking why we find there such apparently traditional poetry, given the radical, ... More

This essay examines the apparent creative contradictions often noted in comparing Joyce's prose and poetry, asking why we find there such apparently traditional poetry, given the radical, experimental quality of Joyce's prose. An understanding of Joyce's “oscillating” perspectives--his ability to sustain often contrary concepts--is crucial to see not only his purposes in the Chamber Music poems but indeed to understand the meanings of Joyce's entire body of work. This oscillating “poetic perspective” has a determining effect on Joyce's subsequent writing: it appears, for example, in the tensions between idealism and cynicism in such Dubliners stories as “Araby” ; in the dialectic between the artistic and the erotic, the active and the passive in Pomes Penyeach and Portrait; in the crucial issues of parenthood in Pomes Penyeach and Exiles, and ultimately Ulysses); and in the multiple, often contrary expressions of sexuality in Pomes Penyeach and Finnegans Wake. By examining elements from Joyce's entire oeuvre, the essay claims that all of the poetry that Joyce produced during his lifetime can inform our understanding of the creative forces behind all his works.Less

“That high unconsortable one”: Chamber Music and “A Painful Case”

Marc C. Conner (ed.)

in The Poetry of James Joyce Reconsidered

This essay discusses Chamber Music in conjunction with the composition of Joyce's elusive Dubliners story, “A Painful Case,” revealing the ways in which “A Painful Case” is a transformation of the ... More

This essay discusses Chamber Music in conjunction with the composition of Joyce's elusive Dubliners story, “A Painful Case,” revealing the ways in which “A Painful Case” is a transformation of the language, ideas, images, and structure of Chamber Music, thereby showing the continuity of growth from Joyce's early efforts in lyric poetry to the Dubliners stories. The essay explores how Joyce's falling in love with Nora parallels the shift from the idealization and narcissism of the poems to the critical acuity of Dubliners, and how the terrifying despair of the final two lyrics in Chamber Music, the “tailpieces,” is expanded in the final meditations of “A Painful Case.” Ultimately, he argues, “A Painful Case” treats in more concentrated form one of the major concerns of Chamber Music: the conflicts between the self, the world, and religion. Its understated surface conceals the obsessions with love, paralysis, and betrayal that underlie both Chamber Music and the whole of Dubliners. Written within a year of the final Chamber Music poems, the story reveals a defining transition in Joyce's writing, moving from the early poems into his mature prose style, and brings into relief the very themes that will occupy Joyce throughout his career.Less

Language of the Dead: The Irish Language in the Twentieth Century

Barry McCrea

in Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and Europe

The chapter explores how as it fell out of mass use as a spoken vernacular the Irish language became the object of utopian longings and psychological investments. It looks at how the revivalist ... More

The chapter explores how as it fell out of mass use as a spoken vernacular the Irish language became the object of utopian longings and psychological investments. It looks at how the revivalist conception of Irish as a lost, perfect language resonated with Joyce’s desire to forge a new language of art, and with the broadly modernist sense that language itself was in need of renewal. The chapter describes and analyzes the different lives and meanings the Irish language has had since its decline as a mass spoken language, and especially at the phenomenon of writers who choose to write in Irish even though it is not their native language.Less

Conclusion: Protestant Power and Plates of Peas

in Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on James Joyce's book Dubliners. It describes the ways Joyce felt estranged from the prevalent power in Ireland of his times, which came primarily ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on James Joyce's book Dubliners. It describes the ways Joyce felt estranged from the prevalent power in Ireland of his times, which came primarily in the form of the Roman Catholic Church and the British Empire. The chapter highlights his opposition to literary revival, and suggests that Dubliners was intended to mirror the anxieties and hopes of the powerless in Ireland during his time.Less

Life and Contexts

Lee Spinks

in James Joyce A Critical Guide

This chapter offers a brief account of James Joyce's life and literary career. The narrative of Joyce's life is punctuated by subsections dealing with issues such as the historical and political ... More

This chapter offers a brief account of James Joyce's life and literary career. The narrative of Joyce's life is punctuated by subsections dealing with issues such as the historical and political situation of late nineteenth-century Ireland, Irish political nationalism and the rise of the physical force tradition, the Irish cultural revival, and the literary and cultural ‘scandal’ of Ulysses. Joyce's father and Belvedere contributed to his personality and attitudes. The 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War of 1922–3 set the Irish political events of Joyce's lifetime. The double disappointment of failing to secure the publication of Chamber Music and Dubliners affected Joyce. The publication of Ulysses did not put an end to the controversies surrounding the novel. Finnegans Wake attracted bemused or hostile reviews. Maud Ellmann's study should still constitute the first port of call for the reader keen to discover more about Joyce's life and times.Less

Work

Lee Spinks

in James Joyce A Critical Guide

This chapter describes the body of James Joyce's work. Joyce' wrote Chamber Music as a protest against himself. One of the fundamental aesthetic principles ofDubliners is that the limits of a ... More

This chapter describes the body of James Joyce's work. Joyce' wrote Chamber Music as a protest against himself. One of the fundamental aesthetic principles ofDubliners is that the limits of a character's world-view are defined by the limits of their language. The real distinction between Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lies at the level of narrative style. Exiles presents his only excursion into drama and remained relatively neglected until its 1970 London revival. With Ulysses, Joyce realised his aesthetic ambition of composing a great epic statement about modern European civilisation. Finnegans Wake makes considerable use of the symbols of marriage, burial, religion and the family, it is a mistake simply to map Joyce's narrative onto Vico's tripartite structure. A significant strand of Wakecriticism concerns itself with the creative and compositional process that brought the text into being.Less

“Consumption, was it?”: Joyce and Cannibalism

Thomas Jackson Rice

in Cannibal Joyce

This chapter is not concerned with the recoveries of the repressed to expose cannibalism and the near obsession the mass culture during the twentieth century. This chapter rather looks at James ... More

This chapter is not concerned with the recoveries of the repressed to expose cannibalism and the near obsession the mass culture during the twentieth century. This chapter rather looks at James Joyce's tales and images of cannibalism within the cultural preoccupation of the literal and figurative anthropophagy. Cannibalism and the illustrations that represent such a concept were already pervasive in the late nineteenth century. And like many children, James Joyce was introduced to anthropophagy in the form of folklore and fairytales which are a genre invested in cannibalism. This chapter looks at the subtext of cannibalism present in Joyce's literature and works, from his Dubliners to hisFinnegans Wake wherein Joyce's psychic origins of his conception of art and artist can be examined and traced.Less

Introduction: A Retrospective Arrangement

Michael Patrick Gillespie

in Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies

This introductory chapter provides an insight into the criticism around essays by James Joyce. The early essays on Joyce need periodic review to reaffirm or overturn their efficacy. The concept of ... More

This introductory chapter provides an insight into the criticism around essays by James Joyce. The early essays on Joyce need periodic review to reaffirm or overturn their efficacy. The concept of Finnegans Wake, articulating the dreams of a single individual, relieved a great deal of interpretive stress that readers otherwise had to engage. Dubliners represents Joyce's earliest published fictional work, with initial versions of some of the stories appearing in 1904 and the collection being published as a book in 1914. Early responses to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man struggled with differing though equally challenging views. Ulysses offers unique interpretive dispensations for readers because of the narrative's encyclopedic quality, its celebration of digression, and its stylistic innovations.Less

The Liturgy of the Epiphany Season and the Epiphanies of Joyce

Florence L. Walzl

in Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies

The chapter focuses on the importance of the word epiphany so frequently used by James Joyce in his short stories. The basic meaning of epiphany in Greek as έπιφάνεια is appearance or manifestation, ... More

The chapter focuses on the importance of the word epiphany so frequently used by James Joyce in his short stories. The basic meaning of epiphany in Greek as έπιφάνεια is appearance or manifestation, and this word is related to a verb meaning to display or show forth and in the passive and middle voice to shine forth. The cyclic pattern of seasons in the Church year and its planes of symbolic meanings and correspondences are the two prominent aspects of liturgy which appear to have affected Joyce's writing greatly. In Dubliners, the narratives resemble the liturgical epiphanies. The Epiphany sequence influenced Joyce's concept of the literary epiphany and as a result his short story technique. Joyce's use of God, Bible, and saint analogies (or inversions) in his characterizations are a result of his awareness of the liturgical types.Less

“Epicleti”: The Artistic Possibilities of Schism

Roy Gottfried

in Joyce's Misbelief

This chapter discusses the reason for Joyce using the word “epicleti” and the consequence he might have intended by its use. For Joyce, epicleti was something that was disruptive and alien, something ... More

This chapter discusses the reason for Joyce using the word “epicleti” and the consequence he might have intended by its use. For Joyce, epicleti was something that was disruptive and alien, something that caused the freedom of artistic possibility. Epicleti presented a challenge to Roman orthodoxy as a schismatic choice, it insisted on a figurative event rather than on a literal one, thus it was open to representation and mimesis. It was a dramatic representation rather than a real presence, therefore it was a narrative account rather than an actual process. As a narrative, it evoked something of the past that requires memory and recall; it marked the movement of change and development. This chapter provides an examination of how much Dubliners was affected by the intentionally provocative issue of “epicleti” and how much the stories were connected to Joyce's attraction to schism embodied in this term. Joyce did not merely use the word “epicleti” to impress and to posture, he used it because it offered him means to create an art free from the restraints imposed by the orthodoxy of his background and left things open to what he wished to achieve.Less

Toward 1913 and the “Most Distinguished Irishman”—Shaw

Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel

in Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation

This chapter moves out of Dublin theatres, in part, as Shaw delivered his lecture “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland” to Dubliners in the context of Connolly's elaborate reply to the Catholic ... More

This chapter moves out of Dublin theatres, in part, as Shaw delivered his lecture “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland” to Dubliners in the context of Connolly's elaborate reply to the Catholic Church's effort to stifle socialism, Labour, Nationality, and Religion. The difference between Shaw's lecture and Connolly's Church response touches on the very debate fostered by Shaw and Synge. Connolly then became involved in the Irish trade union movement, uniting it with socialist theory. The period was peppered with Shavian-influenced plays, entering themselves into the socialist debate. As the bourgeois Dubliners whom Shaw satirized, who were also the enemies of Synge's plays, moved against trade unionism, the 1913 Dublin Lockout commenced. The colossal Dublin struggle of labor against capitalism was under way, and Shaw's presence was at hand.Less

“Alcoh alcoho alcoherently”: Alcoholism and Doubling in “Counterparts”

Vike Martina Plock

in Joyce, Medicine, and Modernity

What James Joyce seemed to be most interested in, in writing Dubliners, is a diagnostic approach to the many ailments that paralyze his home town. To that purpose, Joyce's first book displays a wide ... More

What James Joyce seemed to be most interested in, in writing Dubliners, is a diagnostic approach to the many ailments that paralyze his home town. To that purpose, Joyce's first book displays a wide variety of pathologies and illnesses and it is certainly no accident that the collection opens with a reference to a “third stroke.” However, as J. B. Lyons notes, drunkenness is identified as the predominant disease in the Hibernian metropolis. However the story that examines the effects of a drinking disorder in detail is “Counterparts.” Oppression and tyranny are central themes in “Counterparts.” Farrington, a copy clerk in a law firm, is enmeshed in the world of modern office politics that heartlessly mechanize human labor. Similarly, Joyce makes the oppressive dominance of English colonial power an important subtext of the story.Less

Modernism

James Chandler

in An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema

This chapter considers examples of high modernist fiction. It discusses James Joyce's engagement with the products and activities of sentimental culture as these reach back to the Georgian period, ... More

This chapter considers examples of high modernist fiction. It discusses James Joyce's engagement with the products and activities of sentimental culture as these reach back to the Georgian period, when modern Dublin took architectural and cultural shape, a history nostalgically registered in “The Dead,” the long final story of Dubliners (1913). It also examines an earlier work of modernist fiction, and a seminal one: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, which has suggestive connections to cinema, even to Capra's cinema.Less

Introduction: James Joyce and the Law

Jonathan Goldman

in Joyce and the Law

The introduction offers an overview of legal issues pertaining to James Joyce's life and work. It reviews the previous criticism on this topic and summarizes/previews the contents of the volume. ... More

The introduction offers an overview of legal issues pertaining to James Joyce's life and work. It reviews the previous criticism on this topic and summarizes/previews the contents of the volume. These synopses become the basis of Goldman's argument that research in legal history offers new insight into the implications of narrative developments in Joyce's Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. These writings include scenes inflected by laws governing, for example, alcohol, public space, marital infidelity, and tenancy. Joyce's work can be seen as critiquing these and other legal regimes. Goldman argues that reading Joyce alongside the law supports and enriches current strategies in Joyce and modernist scholarship.Less

Joyce and British Finance Law: Adrift on the Waters of International Investment

Carey Mickalites

in Joyce and the Law

Carey Mickalites reads select moments in Joyce’s fiction to show how it critically reflects that shady nature of British finance law from a distinctly Irish perspective. While most of Dubliners ... More

Carey Mickalites reads select moments in Joyce’s fiction to show how it critically reflects that shady nature of British finance law from a distinctly Irish perspective. While most of Dubliners focuses on the lower middle class, in “After the Race” Joyce depicts the young and exuberant Jimmy Doyle as a reckless and feckless Irish newcomer to international company finance, virtually equating Doyle’s investment in a French auto firm under limited liability law with excessive gambling. In doing so, the story reflects long-standing English cultural anxieties about unregulated speculation and ties them to stereotypes of the Irish as irrational spendthrifts—rather than rational, law-abiding investors—subject to the risky allure of big returns. Joyce would radically complicate this picture in Ulysses. If we attend to the legal implications of Leopold Bloom’s financial assets and investment schemes, we see that he continually attempts to balance the conflicting impulses of investment fantasies that would capitalize on the vague nature of British finance law and a practical bourgeois realism associated with prudent participation in finance markets.Less