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James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination PDF

192 Pages·2015·0.804 MB·English
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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 This page intentionally left blank 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” This page intentionally left blank 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 This page intentionally left blank 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

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