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James Joyce: A Collection of Critical Essays
Focusing on the writing of poetry, the writing of fiction, and the writing of drama, this volume explores themes such as the creative process, the sources of poetry, and realistic and nonrealistic approaches to drama. The reader is encouraged to write poetry, fiction and drama "on your own" and the text includes methods for submission of material for publication and resources for writers. For professional and aspiring writers of poetry, fiction, and drama.
- Genres20th CenturyAnthologies
99998 pages, Paperback
First published October 9, 1992
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August 1, 2025
Featuring 19 essays, or excerpts from essays, written by various critics, and spanning the life and works of the celebrated author, 1993's James Joyce: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mary T Reynolds, is a mixed bag.
I see I purchased this book 8 years ago and have only got around to reading it now. (The Amazon webpage claims it is 99,998 pages long. My copy has only 238 pages.)
Some of the essays, or excerpts, propose insights I hadn't considered before. Richard Ellmann reads the early pages of Joyce's Portrait as a kind of flashback, thus: "We gradually realize that Stephen has a fever, and that what we have been reading is not a history but a deliberate hodgepodge of memories of his earlier school days and holidays at home, rendered with the discontinuity and intensity appropriate to fever." I certainly never considered this possibility before; I'm skeptical that I buy it now. But it is at least an interesting reading.
Denis Donoghue improbably attributes the phrase from the Portrait, "a day of dappled seaborne clouds," to Hugh Miller's The Testimony of the Rocks; or Geology in its Bearing on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. Perhaps he is right.
Phillip F Herring points out that, regarding "Eveline" in Dubliners, Hugh Kenner once asserted that our heroine saw that ships from the North Wall dock sailed to Liverpool (rather than directly to Buenos Aires), and so she suspected her sailor-boyfriend of duplicity. Seems dubious (unless Eveline was simply looking for an excuse to remain in Dublin).
Cheryl Herr considers Ovidian transformations in the Portrait: the "goatish creatures with human faces" in the sequence of Father Arnell's hellfire sermon and later, on the beach, Stephen's artistic transformation of the birdgirl.
Speaking, as we weren't, of chiasmata. Addressing the structure of the Portrait, Hugh Kenner cites Hans Walter Gabler's discovery that " . . . in Chapter I everything between the first row of asterisks and the second . . . takes place in a twenty-four-hour span . . . [and] the three episodes and diary of Chapter V reverse the overture and three episodes of Chapter I . . . "
In a kind of alchemical formula, A Walton Litz assures us that "It was Joyce's intention to disintegrate the well-made 'novel' into its origins, and then to perform a prodigious act of re-integration." Well . . . maybe.
James H Maddox creates a striking proportional equivalence respecting the comparative outclassing of pairs of characters in terms of confidence, presence, and authority, from "A Little Cloud" in Dubliners and Ulysses: Ignatius Gallaher:Little Chandler::Buck Mulligan:Stephen Dedalus. Maddox's insights continue, and boil over, as he ponders the conclusion of Joyce's initial style in Ulysses as Scylla and Charybdis gives way to Wandering Rocks: "That usurpation [of style] is the most notable formal characteristic of Ulysses, and it constitutes the most momentous change that ever took place in Joyce's conception of his art: after these new styles take over, the composition of Finnegans Wake seems to become virtually an inevitability." Bang: perfect clarity regarding our man Joyce.
Margot Norris points out that there is "ample evidence that [Joyce] read [The Interpretation of Dreams] with care and applied the techniques of dream-work to the Wake. Virtually every one of the 'typical dreams' described by Freud constitutes a major theme in Finnegans Wake." Examples are provided.
As with all such collections, there are nuggets here, but they have to be panned from an overwhelming amount of gravel and sand.
I see I purchased this book 8 years ago and have only got around to reading it now. (The Amazon webpage claims it is 99,998 pages long. My copy has only 238 pages.)
Some of the essays, or excerpts, propose insights I hadn't considered before. Richard Ellmann reads the early pages of Joyce's Portrait as a kind of flashback, thus: "We gradually realize that Stephen has a fever, and that what we have been reading is not a history but a deliberate hodgepodge of memories of his earlier school days and holidays at home, rendered with the discontinuity and intensity appropriate to fever." I certainly never considered this possibility before; I'm skeptical that I buy it now. But it is at least an interesting reading.
Denis Donoghue improbably attributes the phrase from the Portrait, "a day of dappled seaborne clouds," to Hugh Miller's The Testimony of the Rocks; or Geology in its Bearing on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. Perhaps he is right.
Phillip F Herring points out that, regarding "Eveline" in Dubliners, Hugh Kenner once asserted that our heroine saw that ships from the North Wall dock sailed to Liverpool (rather than directly to Buenos Aires), and so she suspected her sailor-boyfriend of duplicity. Seems dubious (unless Eveline was simply looking for an excuse to remain in Dublin).
Cheryl Herr considers Ovidian transformations in the Portrait: the "goatish creatures with human faces" in the sequence of Father Arnell's hellfire sermon and later, on the beach, Stephen's artistic transformation of the birdgirl.
Speaking, as we weren't, of chiasmata. Addressing the structure of the Portrait, Hugh Kenner cites Hans Walter Gabler's discovery that " . . . in Chapter I everything between the first row of asterisks and the second . . . takes place in a twenty-four-hour span . . . [and] the three episodes and diary of Chapter V reverse the overture and three episodes of Chapter I . . . "
In a kind of alchemical formula, A Walton Litz assures us that "It was Joyce's intention to disintegrate the well-made 'novel' into its origins, and then to perform a prodigious act of re-integration." Well . . . maybe.
James H Maddox creates a striking proportional equivalence respecting the comparative outclassing of pairs of characters in terms of confidence, presence, and authority, from "A Little Cloud" in Dubliners and Ulysses: Ignatius Gallaher:Little Chandler::Buck Mulligan:Stephen Dedalus. Maddox's insights continue, and boil over, as he ponders the conclusion of Joyce's initial style in Ulysses as Scylla and Charybdis gives way to Wandering Rocks: "That usurpation [of style] is the most notable formal characteristic of Ulysses, and it constitutes the most momentous change that ever took place in Joyce's conception of his art: after these new styles take over, the composition of Finnegans Wake seems to become virtually an inevitability." Bang: perfect clarity regarding our man Joyce.
Margot Norris points out that there is "ample evidence that [Joyce] read [The Interpretation of Dreams] with care and applied the techniques of dream-work to the Wake. Virtually every one of the 'typical dreams' described by Freud constitutes a major theme in Finnegans Wake." Examples are provided.
As with all such collections, there are nuggets here, but they have to be panned from an overwhelming amount of gravel and sand.
Displaying 1 of 1 review