Work in Progress: Joyce Centenary Essays

by Richard F. Peterson (Editor), Alan M. Cohn (Editor)

Work in Progress contains a separate essay on each of Joyce’s major works (Dubliners, A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake), with recognized Joyce schol­ars examining in each a central critical problem. Morris Beja examines Dubliners from the perspective of the “epiphany,” a concept for­mulated by the young Joyce. Richard Peter­son finds a rhythmic flow in A Portrait that helps us see its narrative structuring more clearly. Shari and Bernard Benstock explore Ulysses to discern how movement and spa­tiality function in its narrative. Patrick Mc­Carthy considers how Finnegans Wake and its audience are necessarily symbiotic partners. In the second grouping of essays Edmund Epstein and Fritz Senn each investigate how Joyce handles—or manipulates—language. Looking at three decades of criticism, Mar­garet Church demonstrates where the study of the Viconian cycle and stream-of-con­sciousness has led toward an understanding of the role of time in Joyce’s fiction. Sheldon Brivic adduces a Joycean psychology from the works that offers an additional dimension to the study of the texts. Suzette Henke traces the growing maturity of Joyce’s atti­tude toward women. Completing the collec­tion, Father Robert Boyle examines the reli­gious ethos present in Joyce’s work.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1983

Reviews

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1983, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of James Joyce, the Southern Illinois University Press published a slender volume (154 pages) entitled Work in Progress: Joyce Centenary Essays, edited by Richard F Peterson, Alan M Cohn and Edmund L Epstein. The small volume contains 10 short essays concerned with Joyce's works and various concerns about them. While the rather severe space limitations placed on the individual authors might have inspired the composers to sharpen their focus to dazzling intensity, I fear the more common result was in the opposite direction, and the resulting essays did not rise to the occasion.

Some of the more compelling insights expressed here are in relation to Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Morris Beja's close examination of the familiar Joycean preoccupation with the senses of sight and sound, as found in Dubliners, is of surprising interest in this regard, and Beja points out that "a series of unanswered questions appears throughout" Dubliners, always being resolved in a moment of illumination, a vision, of epiphany. Richard F Peterson examines the often-mentioned contradictory dual way of reading the Portrait, whether as a narrative of the evolution of artistic genius or, ironically, as the bombastic, overinflated, uninformed blather of callow youth. An integrated conception of these two readings Peterson seems to prefer as being the better reading.

Edmund L Epstein has some interesting insights regarding etymologically precise use of common language, demonstrating how Joyce often distracts us with seemingly familiar vocabulary when he's actually reaching back to all-but-forgotten usages which end up undermining the apparent meaning of his sentences. "It is characteristic of Joyce," Epstein points out, "to ascribe drastic results to subtle ambiguities in English syntax." A single, grossly oversimplified example must suffice here. In the famous, mysterious, seemingly disproportionately melodramatic last line of "Araby" in Dubliners we read: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." Epstein argues that the use of "vanity" here is less self-chastisement than a callback to the distinction between the emptiness of a human breath, a mere exhalation, and more material content, which would rewrite the book of Ecclesiastes (and naturally we readers will relate "Araby" with Ecclesiastes) to say: "emptiness of emptiness" rather than "vanity of vanities." Such a (re)reading would cushion the end of "Araby" and so cause us to reconsider the entire story. Naturally, Joyce's multivalency is always at play, and the Araby bazaar is also a stand-in for Thackery's Vanity Fair.

Sheldon Brivic wisely points out that "Dubliners shows a group of minds controlled by a society, not suggesting any possibility of freedom until its last story," contrasting this with Joyce's later works. The colossi of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake extend more agency to many characters, but on such scales that their dedicated essayists fare less successfully in these abbreviated confines. Special mention must be extended to Robert Boyle who (among other insights) teases out interesting and amusing connections between 1 Corinthians and A Midsummer Night's Dream and Finnegans Wake.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Digging deeper in my research on Dubliners, I found this very accessible and mind-blowing collection of essays on all manner of Joyceana. Well written and very thought provoking.