Joyce and reality
Subtitle: the empirical strikes back
By: John Gordon.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Irish studies; Irish studies (Syracuse, N.Y.)
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Syracuse, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 338
Subjects: Joyce, James, 1882-1941.; Bloom, Leopold (Fictitious character); Bloom, Molly (Fictitious character); Empiricism in literature.; Reality in literature.; Dublin (Ireland) -- In literature.
Description: "Joyce was a realist, but his reality was not ours," writes John Gordon in his new book. Here, he maintains that the shifting styles and techniques of Joyce's work are a function of two interacting realities - the external reality of a particular time and place and the internal reality of a character's mental state. In making this case Gordon offers up a number of new readings: how Stephen Dedalus conceives and composes his villanelle; why the Dubliners story about Little Chandler is titled "A Little Cloud"; why Gerty MacDowell suddenly appears and disappears; what is happening when Leopold Bloom stares for two minutes on end at a beer bottle's label; why the triangle etched at the center of Finnegans Wake doubles itself and grows a pair of circles; why the next at last chapter of Ulysses has, by far, the book's highest incidence of the letter C; and who is the man in the macintosh."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-314) and index.
Table of contents: title: A portrait of the artist : a domino theory; title: "A little cloud" : a nebular hypothesis; title: Distillates, counterparts; title: The Orphic "sirens," the Orphic Ulysses; title: The erotic gerty, the pornographic gerty; title: Henry's flower; title: Approaching reality in "Oxen of the sun"; title: Bloom as Thomas De Quincey; title: Bloom's Bell; title: Dublin : sun, moon, stars; title: Bloom's birth star; title: Plotinus, Spencer again, and the proliferant continuances of "Oxen of the sun"; title: Approaching reality in "Circe"; title: "Circe" again: thirty-two anomalies; title: "Circe" yet again : an operatic finale; title: Haines's hallucination; title: "Ithaca" as the letter C; title: Passport to eternity; title: The mysterious man in the MacIntosh : a prize titbits story by Mr. James Joyce; title: Seeing things in Finnegans Wake.