num_pages: 201
description: James Joyce's self-imposed exiled from Ireland had a profound influence on his work. In James Joyce: The Undiscover'd Country Bernard Benstock traces the effect of exile on Joyce's writings and on his development of a literary style. Experimentation in technique and concern with form, structure and texture were to bring him continuing acclaim as a major artist.Joyce's consciousness of his Irish origins was balanced, although not outweighed, by his sense of belonging to a wider continental literary tradition. Among his European contemporaries, Joyce espoused Ibsen; and he sought for his cultural roots in the medieval past, especially in Dante. Joyce's debt to English literature, and particularly to Shakespeare, is also treated as a formative influence.For Joyce being a writer meant a total commitment to a world literary tradition. It involved him in the lonesome pursuit of an artistic ideal which removed him from Ireland and placed him above the struggles of his native land. This tension, basic to Joyce's writings, is subject to scrutiny by Bernard Benstock through a close study of the characters and language of Joyce's major works, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.In conclusion James Joyce: The Undiscover'd Country shows how Joyce's theory of art and his refusal to be confined by a strictly Anglo-Irish literary tradition helped shape his purpose and greatness as a writer.
language: English
title: James Joyce: The undiscover'd country
titlecomplete: James Joyce: The undiscover'd country
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Gill and Macmillan