The Commodification of James Joyce (original) (raw)
Related papers
Review of Consuming Joyce: 100 Years of Ulysess in Ireland, by John McCourt
Review of Irish studies in Europe, 2023
Review by Mariana Bolfarine, Federal University of Rondonópolis and of Mato Grosso (UFR/UFMT) Consuming Joyce recounts the history of the reception of Joyce and chiefly of Ulysses, over the next hundred years in Ireland in connection with other countries, especially the USA and France. As a senior Joycean scholar, John McCourt is a Dubliner who has lived and taught in Italy for many years; his wide-reaching references reveal extensive archival research and profound transdisciplinary knowledge of Joyce. McCourt's writing style is clear, accessible, witty and good-humoured. His meticulousness and attention to detail make the book a source of research for more experienced scholars, but it can also be read as an enjoyable immersion into Joyce' life and work by non-specialists. The idea of 'consumption' of buying, acquiring a product, using it up and discarding it is the backbone of John McCourt's Consuming Joyce, which concerns the love and hate relationship of Ireland and the Irish towards James Joyce. In fact, according to McCourt, Joyce was involved in seeing that Ulysses was bought, consumed and 'receptionated' (1) by Irish writers and academics, who felt little affinity with the early scholarship which initially developed in the USA. Consuming Joyce is arranged in ten chapters that present a chronology of the acceptance of Joyce in Ireland and overview of the reception of Ulysses in schools, by the media and by popular culture. At the outset, McCourt explicates that Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man had little reward, thus when it came to Ulysses, he was more careful. Since by 1922 his reputation was still at stake, according to McCourt, Ulysses has made it 'impossible to separate the dancer from the dance' (2). McCourt outlines the gradual development of Irish acceptance by the recovery of key locations, such as the Martello Tower, the release of Joyce-related theatre and film, and the purchase of manuscripts by the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The commission of plaques and monuments followed, and the interest in commemorative events such as Bloomsday settled Ulysses' 'journey from an oddity to a commodity' (4). McCourt upholds that Ulysses remains relevant today, as it allows a critical appraisal of human nature and language: 'So, if we wish to know ourselves, Ulysses is the best place to start' (5). Joyce' decision to leave Ireland in 1904 is the subject of the first chapter, 'Regrettable Celebrity: Joyce in Ireland before Ulysses'. Although his brother Stanislaus thought Joyce' move to Trieste was one more of his escapades, exile was necessary for Copyright (c) 2023 by Mariana Bolfarine. Contributors of articles and reviews are permitted (provided relevant bibliographic details that credit its publication in this journal are included) to deposit all versions of articles published in RISE in institutional or other repositories of their choice without
“Ulysses 1922-2022: Creative Reinventions”
Estudios Irlandeses, 2023
Copyright (c) 2023 by Anne Fogarty. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged for access. Joycean anniversaries have always served as important milestones. Inevitably, they further add to Joyce's worldwide brand and cement his value as an incontestably global author. But more importantly they also provide opportunities to revisit and re-evaluate his work for aficionados and open it up for the uninitiated. In Ireland, significant years such as 1982, the anniversary of Joyce's birth, and 2004, the anniversary of Bloomsday, have proven vital for an increased appreciation of Joyce as a writer who directly connects with and speaks to contemporary Ireland. Joyce has in recent decades transmogrified from a scandalous author, upstart outsider, and foreign import to a kindred spirit and congenial but always challenging artistic role model. 2022 marked the centenary of the publication of Ulysses on 2 February 1922. Movingly, the no. 1 copy of Ulysses signed by Joyce "in token of gratitude" and given to Harriet Shaw Weaver, his British patron and friend, forms a centrepiece of the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) which opened in Autumn 2019. Akin to the Book of Kells, it resides in a dimly lit glass case open at the dedication page on the top floor of the museum. Thus, generously but daringly, a book that normally is kept in the vaults away from prying eyes because of its financial and cultural value is given a dedicated public space of its own where it can be viewed by all. It now has become a totemic object in modern day Dublin but also a living force in its cultural scene. Many of the events to mark the anniversary of Ulysses were steered by this new museum. Dublin overall and the Tower in Sandycove in particular may have been deemed an omphalos in the "Telemachus" episode but Joyce's work is of course of global interest. This short overview will largely concentrate on events in Dublin in 2022, but they represent only part of a worldwide web of celebratory activities. Cognisant of how easily dedicated acts of homage can get lost, a website sponsored by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (https://ulysses100.ie) and curated by MoLI acted as a portal with the purpose of listing and permanently recording all of the Joyce-related events last year. It brings together a disparate programme of happenings that captures the dynamic nature of current interactions with Joyce's work. A half-day seminar on 4 February "Translating 'Penelope'", co-organized by Anne Fogarty and Margaret Kelleher, featuring readings by actors, Olwen Fouéré, Christiane Reicke, and Roxana Nic Liam, of sections of the text in French, German, and Irish and papers by Luca
POLITICAL RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY HEGEMONY IN ULYSSES AND A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
Literary scholarship on Joyce does not address something fundamental in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: the relationship between modernity, postcoloniality, and religion. It may be helpful to think of the final act of A Portrait as the announcement of departure from convention. What precedes Stephen’s announcement, however, is a lucid explanation of all that is murky, all that demanded the departure, that point where postcoloniality and modernism intersect. The “departure” is artistic, geographical, and political. In Joyce, it is difficult to separate religion from politics. It is always there; not only as part of a moral equation, but also a political one; to speak of colonialism in Ireland is to speak of both British Imperialism and the Roman Catholic Church. The central conflicts on the character level in A Portrait are those of identity and mode of expression, conflicts that arise from the influence of Britain and the Church. Joyce’s major subsequent works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, attempt to examine and resolve these conflicts, thus furthering the interconnectedness of modernity and postcolonialism.
and Poldy not Irish enough...": Nationalism and Ideology in James Joyce's Ulyssess
2008
as going very bare of learning, as wild hares, as anatomies of death: "What ish my nation?" And sensibly, though so much later, the wandering Bloom replied, "Ireland," said Bloom, "I was born here. Ireland." One of the many lures of Ulysses (1922) centers around the character of Leopold Bloom. He personifies, arguably, the heart of Joyce's epic: an advertisement canvasser wandering along the streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904, as he would on any given day. But Bloom is Jewish, moderate in his political views, works, and does not drink or gamble; in short, his depiction stands out as a far cry from the stereotypical Irish man of Joyce's earlier Dubliners (1914), where the salesman was initially meant to belong. In crafting this character, Joyce highlighted Bloom's ―otherness,‖ yet the context of Ulysses-overflowing with intertextual references to Joyce's collection of short stories and his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (19...
While Ulysses is an incontestable juggernaut of modernist literature, critical analysis of the text has too often been contained by impenetrable academic discourse, dismissing Joyce's fundamental desire that the text be widely accessible. Indeed, the exclusive imprisonment of the text clashes profoundly with the novel's prevailing argument for the vitality of the pedestrian struggles of the everyman. Leopold Bloom, a poorly educated but intellectually curious member of Dublin's middle-class bourgeois, demonstrates the perils of navigating mass-produced channels of information and the consequent liability of misinterpretation. The novel is foremost a text concerned with text, and Joyce examines the effects of mass-produced popular literature on collective subjectivity and the cultivation of individual identity in Bloom and others like Stephen Dedalus and Gerty MacDowell. By introducing the astronomical concept of parallax, Joyce considers the complications that arise from the frequently distorted intake of information, particularly in Bloom's struggle to assert himself. Ultimately, Ulysses considers intellectual populism, the culture of reading, and the imperial agenda at work in the dissemination of information through colonized Ireland.