Many scholars of Finnegans Wake have long suspected that a key to the Wake lay deep within the core of Irish myth. George Gibson proposes a new interpretation of the novel, based upon a previously unrecognized paradigm from Irish mythology underlying the entirety of the work.This mythic structure derives from the ancient rituals and events collectively known as the Teamhur Feis (the Rites of Tara), the most important religious festival conducted in pre-Christian Ireland. Gibson demonstrates that sources known and used by Joyce describe the Rites as a historical event with...

This collection of essays is the first in 15 years to review the current state of theory on James Joyce s Ulysses, and this volume comes more than 100 years after the fictitious Leopold Bloom steps into the novel, a day Joyceans celebrate as Bloomsday.The contributors well known for their work in James Joyce studies each provide three assessments in their areas of specialization: a history of the best criticism to date, a timely updating of critical positions, and an agenda for future examination.In clear, accessible language, the collection examines the insights readers can expect...

Joyce in Trieste is a record of the transformation in text, meaning, and language that Trieste worked upon Joyce. Based on presentations from the Trieste Symposium of 2002, this volume begins with three path-breaking essays: Michael Groden s unveiling of the manuscripts acquired by the National Library of Ireland in 2002, Margot Norris s introduction of the particularly effective paradigm of risky reading to describe the provocative re-contextualizations in history, theory, and culture that reveal something new about Joyce s work, and Zack Bowen s celebration of the Platonic and erotic...

Richard Beckman argues that readers ofFinnegans Wake must develop a new method of reading that flows from the text itself. Focusing on the mode of perception in the Wake--seeing the world obliquely because that is often the only way to get at the nature of things--Beckman maintains that Joyce s satire depends on looking at the public scene from behind, a view at the same time vaudevillian and philosophic. Indirect perception is at once the basis for Joyce s peculiar locutions, conveying incompatible double and triple meanings, and also an account of how the mind works....

Roy Gottfried takes a different and somewhat controversial approach to the study of James Joyce's relation to religion by examining the author's misbelief rather than the disbelief so many scholars claim he professed.Gottfried argues that Joyce in fact had a great deal of respect for the Catholic Church though he did not accept the orthodox dogma he learned as a youth. Instead, Joyce was most interested in actual schisms that challenged the authority and universality of Catholic dogma.This focus on schism is most readily evident in Gottfried's analysis of Joyce's use of key...

This text investigates several themes about music's relationship to the literary compositions of James Joyce: music as a condition to which Joyce aspired; music theory as a useful way of reading his works; and musical compositions inspired by or connected with him.