Coilin Owens
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813042473
- eISBN:
- 9780813051567
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813042473.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
“After the Race” registers James Joyce's personal anxieties and rivalries on the verge of his emigration from Dublin. In the figure of Villona, the detached and gifted musician, Joyce sketches his ...
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“After the Race” registers James Joyce's personal anxieties and rivalries on the verge of his emigration from Dublin. In the figure of Villona, the detached and gifted musician, Joyce sketches his first self-portrait, heralding the dawn of his own literary career as “the poet of my nation.” The story reflects the radical nationalist perception articulated by Arthur Griffith that the staging the Gordon Bennett Cup Race and King Edward VII's visit in July 1903 were both designed to upstage the centennial celebration of Robert Emmet's rebellion. The story allegorizes these Anglo-Irish tensions within the Great Game of global politics. The technique of the story—its design, use of free indirect discourse, multivalent language, significant silences, and cunning allusions—assimilates elements from its author's rhetorical education and invokes precedents from Ovid, Villon, Dumas, Dolmetsch, and the Irish oral tradition. The story therefore documents Joyce's multiple affinities with the mainstream of European literature and with the popular movement to revive native cultural practices. On the moral and philosophical planes, the story invokes the Pauline criticism of pagan materialism while brilliantly parodying the vacuous calculations of Theosophy. This apprentice exercise exhibits many of Joyce's permanent themes and is demonstrably a sophisticated political and philosophic work written in the shadow of Dante's Divine Comedy.Less
“After the Race” registers James Joyce's personal anxieties and rivalries on the verge of his emigration from Dublin. In the figure of Villona, the detached and gifted musician, Joyce sketches his first self-portrait, heralding the dawn of his own literary career as “the poet of my nation.” The story reflects the radical nationalist perception articulated by Arthur Griffith that the staging the Gordon Bennett Cup Race and King Edward VII's visit in July 1903 were both designed to upstage the centennial celebration of Robert Emmet's rebellion. The story allegorizes these Anglo-Irish tensions within the Great Game of global politics. The technique of the story—its design, use of free indirect discourse, multivalent language, significant silences, and cunning allusions—assimilates elements from its author's rhetorical education and invokes precedents from Ovid, Villon, Dumas, Dolmetsch, and the Irish oral tradition. The story therefore documents Joyce's multiple affinities with the mainstream of European literature and with the popular movement to revive native cultural practices. On the moral and philosophical planes, the story invokes the Pauline criticism of pagan materialism while brilliantly parodying the vacuous calculations of Theosophy. This apprentice exercise exhibits many of Joyce's permanent themes and is demonstrably a sophisticated political and philosophic work written in the shadow of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Cóilín Owens
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813042473
- eISBN:
- 9780813051567
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813042473.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter 3 examines a dilation of the personal circumstances, during the late summer of 1904, of Joyce's writing of “After the Race,” principally his estrangement from his erstwhile male friends, ...
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Chapter 3 examines a dilation of the personal circumstances, during the late summer of 1904, of Joyce's writing of “After the Race,” principally his estrangement from his erstwhile male friends, especially Oliver St. John Gogarty. This rivalry Joyce subsequently developed with great virtuosity in the “Telemachus” episode of Ulysses. The figure of Villona is drawn after French medieval poet, François Villon, and musician Arnold Dolmetsch. These glosses help us appreciate the first draft of Joyce's self-representation as an artist.Less
Chapter 3 examines a dilation of the personal circumstances, during the late summer of 1904, of Joyce's writing of “After the Race,” principally his estrangement from his erstwhile male friends, especially Oliver St. John Gogarty. This rivalry Joyce subsequently developed with great virtuosity in the “Telemachus” episode of Ulysses. The figure of Villona is drawn after French medieval poet, François Villon, and musician Arnold Dolmetsch. These glosses help us appreciate the first draft of Joyce's self-representation as an artist.
