Joyce and Reality: The Empirical Strikes Back"Joyce was a realist, but his reality was not ours," writes John Gordon in his new book. Here, he maintains that the shifting styles and techniques of Joyce's works is a function of two interacting realities the external reality of a particular time and place and the internal reality of a character's mental state. In making this case Gordon offers up a number of new readings: how Stephen Dedalus conceives and composes his villanelle; why the Dubliners story about Little Chandler is titled "A Little Cloud"; why Gerty MacDowell suddenly appears and disappears; what is happening when Leopold Bloom stares for two minutes on end at a beer bottle's label; why the triangle etched at the center of Finnegans Wake doubles itself and grows a pair of circles; why the next to last chapter of Ulysses has, by far, the book's highest incidence of the letter C; and who is the man in the macintosh. Gordon, whose authoritative "Finnegans Wake": A Plot Summary received critical acclaim and is considered one of the standard references, revisesand challengesthe received version of that reality. For instance, Joyce features ghost visitations, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena not as "flights into fantasy" but because he believed in the real possibility of such occurrences. |
From inside the book
Page 314
... The Word According to James Joyce : Reconstructing Representation . Cran- bury , N.J .: Associated Univ . Press . Ziarek , Ewa . 1992. " ' Circe ' : Joyce's Argumentum ad Feminam . " James Joyce Quarterly 30 : 51-68 . 314 / REFERENCES.
... The Word According to James Joyce : Reconstructing Representation . Cran- bury , N.J .: Associated Univ . Press . Ziarek , Ewa . 1992. " ' Circe ' : Joyce's Argumentum ad Feminam . " James Joyce Quarterly 30 : 51-68 . 314 / REFERENCES.
Contents
A Domino Theory | 1 |
A Nebular Hypothesis | 33 |
Distillates Counterparts | 40 |
Copyright | |
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absinthe according Aeolus apparition appears become beginning Blazes book's Boylan called Chandler's chapter characters Circe comes constellation Cyclops Dedalus deshil Dolphin's Barn Dublin earlier episode episode's Equuleus Eumaeus eyes fact father Finnegans Wake Gerty Gerty's ghost going Hades Haines Haines's hallucinations Hart hear instance Irish Ithaca James Joyce James Joyce Quarterly James Joyce's Joyce's notes Joycean Kenner kind Laertes later Lenehan Leopold Bloom Lestrygonians light Little Cloud look Lynch M'Intosh memory mental mind mirror Molly Molly's mother Mulligan narrative Nausicaa nebular nebular hypothesis night Odysseus Orphic Oxen passage phrase Portrait Press probably psychic Purefoy reader reading recalls remembered Rudolph Bloom scene seems sequence Shakespeare Shaun Sirens someone sound star Stephen and Bloom Stephen Dedalus story Street telepathy things thought tion turns Ulysses Univ villanelle vision voice Wandering Rocks woman word