Full length PDFs of Joycean criticism
1) Morris Beja and Shari Benstock: Coping with Joyce
2) Vincent Cheng: Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture
3) Patrick Hogan: James Joyce, Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition
Reviewed by Tom De Keyser:
Patrick Colm Hogan is an ambitious writer. Early in Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition, he promises to explore “the key components of cognition and poetics” in one of the most complex novels of the twentieth century, James Joyce’s Ulysses (Hogan 2014: 5). In six chapters, this book argues that simulation is a constitutive element of cognitive research, and that it is a central means by which authors create stories. The framework of narratology is used to constitute the argument on the basis of the distinction between what is told in a narrative (“story”) and how it is told (“discourse”). Hogan illustrates different aspects of simulation with multiple literary examples taken from various genres. On the story level, the works of Shakespeare and Racine are examined in order to make a connection between character simulation and authors’ cognitive operations. Next to simulating characters, authors use metaphors and models (the way The Odyssey is a model to Ulysses) to guide simulation, which is demonstrated in relation to writings of Brecht and Kafka. On the level of discourse, an author’s creation of plot is clarified by an analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and narration itself is taken up in the surprising Afterword, which simulates a conversation between Hogan and Calvino... According to Hogan, simulation is the central process by which Joyce developed his novel. ...Of course, Hogan admits that things are far more complex, but he contends that authorial simulation in tandem with a simulated readership is crucial to the creation of a convincing story world, a world that only exists in minds. However, simulation still has a close relation to its real-life counterpart.
The second half of Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition therefore presents an argument in favour of a connection between Joyce’s novel and reality. According to Hogan, simulation of the fictional events and actions on 16 June 1904 constitutes Joyce’s way to provide the reader with a convincing representation of reality. He aims to reexamine the notion of realism in relation to Ulysses. Hogan notes that his argument goes against the interpretation offered by an important commentator in narratology and reader response theory: Wolfgang Iser. In 1989, Iser wrote an influential essay called “Ulysses and the reader”. He argued that Ulysses establishes a radical break with nineteenth-century fiction, as it resists a traditional interpretation, namely that art should represent reality. Ulysses simply “puts an end to representation” and, as a consequence, to “expectations” of tradition (Iser 1989: 133). Every expectation proposed in the novel is later on inexorably shattered, leaving the reader in a wasteland of unfulfilled expectations. Iser thus presents an interpretation of Ulysses that considers it as radically “making it new” and embodying the spirit of the age, namely attempting to bring order to chaos, but failing in the attempt... While Iser writes that Ulysses does away with this notion, Hogan contradicts him with his interpretation of simulation. According to Hogan, Ulysses provides the reader with a particular representation of reality, though it does not intend to mirror or transcribe reality. Above all, Joyce’s novel does not give a truthful image of reality, but instead wishes to cultivate the reader’s “understanding” of it (Hogan 2014: 116). This is what Hogan calls “communicative realism” (2014: 116). Furthermore, Ulysses establishes a critique on norms imposed by society and thereby opposes specific, misleading ideas about reality...the book refuses to accept traditional – what Hogan calls “external” – expectations, motivations, and norms. In order to provide a convincing interpretation of Joycean realism, Hogan takes this idea further. He correctly observes that Ulysses offers a critique not only of external norms, but also of newly-established, internal norms.
4) Ulysses with Declan Kiberd’s Introduction
Quotes from the intro: “The sincere nationalist asks writers to hold a miror up to Cathleen Ní Houlihan’s face; authentic liberationist wistfully observes that the cracked looking-glass, which is all he has been left by the coloniser, renders not a single but a multiple self.’ (p.lxxviii; also Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.298.) [Cont.]
“The difference between these two versions of Irish Renaissance might best be explained by invoking Lionel Trilling’s brilliant distinction between sincerity and authenticity. Sincerity, a congruence between avowal and feeling, can be achieved when there is no problem of form: in it based on the Romantic ideal of truth to the self and it presupposes a definite indentity [sic] which it becomes the task of a lifetime to be true to. Authenticity is a more excruciatingly modern demand, which begins with the admission that there is a problem of form, and that this makes a congruence between avowal and feeling difficult: it recognises that the issue is not truth to the self but the finding of the many selves that one might wish to be true to. It makes the liberating concession that a person, or a nation, has a plurality of identities, constantly remaking themselves as a result of perpetual renewals. Joyce’s constant struggles with the question of form […] places him squarely in this tradition.” (p.lxxvii.)
“[…] Ulysses is an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies. It holds a mirror up to the colonial capital that was Dublin, 16 June 1904, but it also offers redemptive glimpses of a future world which might be made over in terms of those utopian moments.’ (p.lxxx; end)
Harry Levin: James Joyce: A Critical Introduction
Because Harry Levin’s view is large, as opposed to the many necessary exegeses and close textual studies, he leads the reader easily into the delights to be found in Joyce, from the comparatively simple prose of Dubliners, through Ulysses and into the complexities of Finnegans Wake. The insight and brilliance of this "critical introduction," first published by New Directions in 1941, make it as rewarding for the expert as the student. For this revised edition, Mr. Levin, who is Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard, has made revisions and added a new preface and a long "postscript" which he calls "Revising Joyce." He examines the works that have come to light in the last few years and some of the important later biographical writings about Joyce.
5) John McCourt: James Joyce In Context
This collection of original, cohesive and concise essays charts the vital contextual backgrounds to Joyce's life and writing. The volume begins with a chronology of Joyce's publishing history, an analysis of his various biographies and a study of his many published and unpublished letters. It goes on to examine how his works were received in the main twentieth-century critical and theoretical schools. Most importantly, it places Joyce within multiple Irish, British and European contexts, providing a lively sense of the varied and changing world in which he lived, which formed him, and from which he wrote. The essays collectively show how Joyce was rooted in his times, how he is both a product and a critic of his multiple contexts, and how important he remains to the world of literature, criticism and culture.
6) Laurent Milesi: James Joyce and the Difference of Language
Cambridge Press book release:
James Joyce and the Difference of Language offers an alternative look at Joyce's writing by placing his language at the intersection of various critical perspectives: linguistics, philosophy, feminism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism and intertextuality. Combining close textual analysis and theoretically informed readings, an international team of leading scholars explores how Joyce's experiments with language repeatedly challenge our ways of reading. Topics covered include reading Joyce through translations; the role of Dante's literary linguistics in Finnegans Wake; and the place of gender in Joyce's modernism. Two further essays illustrate aspects of Joyce's cultural politics in Ulysses and the ethics of desire in Finnegans Wake. Informed by debates in Joyce scholarship, literary studies and critical theory, and addressing the full range of his writing, this volume comprehensively examines the critical diversity of Joyce's linguistic practices. It is essential reading for all scholars of Joyce and modernism.
7) Daniel R. Schwarz: Reading Joyce’s Ulysses
Reissued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Reading Joyce's 'Ulysses' includes a new preface taking account of scholarly and critical development since its original publication. It shows how the now important issues of post-colonialism, feminism, Irish Studies and urban culture are addressed within the text, as well as a discussion of how the book can be used by both beginners and seasoned readers. Schwarz not only presents a powerful and original reading of Joyce's great epic novel, but discusses it in terms of a dialogue between recent and more traditional theory. Focusing on what he calls the odyssean reader, Schwarz demonstrates how the experience of reading Ulysses involves responding both to traditional plot and character, and to the novel's stylistic experiments.
Schwarz's sensible, conservative reading of Ulysses emphasizes that "Joyce always returns from his fascination with stylistic innovation to focus on his characters." Though his approach is traditional, Schwarz does justice throughout to the novel's radical ambiguity and to contemporary critical theory. Chapters on how Joyce's fiction "signifies," Joyce's concept of the hero, and the role of the reader are followed by a substantial episode-by-episode reader's guide. The Iliad , Wilde, Yeats, Dante, Milton, Tennyson, Swift, and Blake figure prominently, and Schwarz argues strikingly for the central importance of the "Scylla and Charybdis" chapter. Though not a radical departure from earlier readings, this is a thoughtful interpretation that serious students of Ulysses will welcome. Keith Cushman, English Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
8) Katie Wales: The Language of James Joyce
This book presents an analysis for students of the language and style of Joyce's major prose works in the light of current work in language studies, stylistics and literary theory. Each chapter addresses a particular aspect of the style of a prose work or text, rhetoric (Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), speech and thought presentation and word-play (Ulysses) and sound-play (Finnegans Wake).
---Amazon blurb
