James Joyce used music and musical allusion in ways that no other writer has attempted. Ulysses alone contains more than 800 song references, many as dependent upon music as lyrics. In these retrospective essays, Zack Bowen, the leading expert on Joyce and music, describes this bond between music and Joyce's fiction, explaining how musical allusions inform both individual passages and the theme or structure of entire works.
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Editorial Reviews
Book Description
"Brilliant contextual criticism. . . . No one else in the field is so knowledgeable."--Richard Fallis, Syracuse University
"Bowen's perspective on Ulysses is valuable not only because of his encyclopedic knowledge of songs, but also because of the knowledge of popular culture and Irish history that frames his commentary."--Vicki Mahaffey, University of Pennsylvania
"A wealth of important information about Joyce's interaction with music. . . . [Bowen] is probably the international expert in this field, and he writes very well."--Michael H. Begnal, Penn State University
James Joyce used music and musical allusion in ways that no other writer has attempted. Ulysses alone contains more than 800 song references, many as dependent upon music as lyrics. In these retrospective essays, Zack Bowen, the leading expert on Joyce and music, describes this bond between music and Joyce's fiction, explaining how musical allusions inform both individual passages and the theme or structure of entire works.
The opening essay is a general statement on Joyce's use of music in the plot, structure, characterization, and thematic and stylistic development of his fiction, particularly Ulysses. The second analyzes the way Joyce employs 158 references to 47 songs in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses. Other essays discuss broader ideas such as music and modernism, music as comedy, and music as ritual (exploring what Bowen calls "the Irish propensity to replace their religious rituals with drinking rituals"). Where necessary, Bowen uses actual lines of music to illustrate his points.
In a new essay for this volume, Bowen outlines his own musical background and the reasons for his lifelong pursuit of the subject of Joyce and music, and he assesses the place of Joyce's music in popular culture studies.
About the Author
Zack Bowen is professor and chair of the English Department at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. He is the author of A Readers Guide to John Barth, Ulysses as a Comic Novel, A Companion to Joyce Studies, Padraic Colum, Mary Lavin, and Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry Through Ulysses, a companion work to Bloom's Old Sweet Song. He is the producer-director of a series of dramatic recordings of chapters of Ulysses, and a former editor of Irish Renaissance Annual.
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