James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination

192 Pages·2015·0.804 MB·English

by  Michael Patrick Gillespie

James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination
The Florida James Joyce Series
University Press of Florida
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
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James Joyce and
the Exilic Imagination

Michael Patrick Gillespie
Foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles, Series Editor
University Press of Florida
Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton
Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota
Copyright 2015 by Michael Patrick Gillespie
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
This book may be available in an electronic edition.
20 19 18 17 16 15 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gillespie, Michael Patrick, author.
James Joyce and the exilic imagination / Michael Patrick Gillespie.
pages cm — (The Florida James Joyce series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-6065-1
1. Joyce, James, 1882-1941—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Authors, Exiled.
3. Exiles’ writings. I. Title. II. Series: Florida James Joyce series.
PR6019.O9Z533575 2015
823'.912—dc23
2014043922
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State
University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida
Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International
University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central
Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South
Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
For Asher Z. Milbauer
whose insight inspired and guided this work
and whose friendship made it possible
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
W. B. Yeats, “The Municipal Gallery Revisited”
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Contents
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . xi
The Context of Exile: A Critical Introduction . . . . . 1
1. Joyce’s Exilic Self-Conception . . . . . . . . . 20
2. Dubliners: The First Glimpse of Ireland from Abroad . . . 35
3. Stephen Dedalus’s Lifelong Exile . . . . . . . . 58
4. Re-Viewing Richard: Nostalgia and Rancor in Exiles . . . 86
5. Ulysses: Exiles on Main Street . . . . . . . . . 101
6. Finnegans Wake and the Exile’s Return . . . . . . 135
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
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Foreword
“Each exilic experience is as unique as the experience of any human life.”
Perhaps this is obvious, but sometimes it takes a critic with the special
gifts of Michael Gillespie to hit what Lynch would call the “Bull’s eye!” I
have some personal interest in the subject, having left England at thirteen
for the brave new world across the Atlantic, and so does Gillespie, who
glances beautifully at his own family’s part in the Irish diaspora (“when
my grandfather left Achill Island”). So does Bloom, of course, and so does
Joyce, and so do all of us. As the introduction shows, in a far-ranging
study of the exile theme from Émile Zola to John Ford, from Joseph Con-
rad to Thomas Mann, exile is a “word known to all men.” What Michael
Gillespie brings to the long-worn subject of modernist exile is a double
vision of sharpness and sensitivity, which is at once unafraid to take on
the foolishness of received critical opinion and deeply attuned to the folly
of the human heart. Time and again Gillespie gives us a less cynical, less
hierarchical reading of the text, whether it is in a new validation of the
intensity of Mr. Duffy’s mourning, a new appreciation of the solicitude
of the sisters of Reverend Flynn, or a new and warmer light shone on the
machinations of Mrs. Mooney and Mrs. Kearney. This is a deeply sympa-
thetic reading, but it is also coldly unafraid to tackle the prescriptive te-
nets of Joycean criticism, from the literary bases for Ellmann’s biographi-
cal pronouncements to the standard readings of Stephen’s encounter with
Cyril Sargent in “Nestor.” With this book, Michael Gillespie returns em-
pathy to the center of Joyce’s world, as any reader of Ulysses comes to
understand is its rightful place.
The idea of the book, that Joyce’s personal experience of exile was shot
through with ambivalence about his native Ireland, an ambivalence that
expresses itself in both his life and his work as hostility and sentimentality
in equal measure, is everywhere compelling. The oscillating perspectives