Dublin's Joyce

by Hugh Kenner

One of the most important books ever written on Uylsses, Dublin's Joyce established Hugh Kenner as a significant modernist critic. This pathbreaking analysis presents Uylsses as a "bit of anti-matter that Joyce sent out to eat the world." The author assumes that Joyce wasn't a man with a box of mysteries, but a writer with a his native European metropolis of Dublin. Dublin's Joyce provides the reader with a perspective of Joyce as a superemely important literary figure without considering him to be the revealer of a secret doctrine.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Literature, Irish Literature

Paperback

First published December 8, 1987

Reviews

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a big deal in Joyce Studies, and if you're a fan of Kenner (you should be!) this makes good reading because it was his first book of experimental criticism. However! It goes a little far in that direction without the balancing sublimity of The Pound Era, and ends up getting just confusing for no real reason by the end: for instance everything in here about Finnigans Wake is unexplained, and a non-genius like me needs quite a bit of help with that one.
The chapter entitled "How to Read Ulysses" is helpful, especially if you're interested in reading Ulysses for the first time. Or third time.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm gearing up for a reading of Finnegans Wake, and the work of Hugh Kenner is so highly regarded in the field of Joycean studies that I felt I had to check him out. Dublin's Joyce, which is a series of essays based on all of Joyce's work is a difficult delight to read. It's a challenging and illuminating collection of insights that, even when the essays are stickily threaded word-wise and simmering in allusions, helped me to see things in Joyce's work I would never have noticed otherwise. When one is embarking on a trip into a Book of the Night, it's best to have a torch to hold ahead of you.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired 1992
The Word, Montreal, Quebec