James Joyce's Ireland [Hardcover]

David Pierce (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 1992

This portrait of James Joyce places the writer in the context of Irish society during his lifetime. At once biography, reference, criticism, and contextual study, the book is enhanced by a selection of illustrative material including maps, sketches, and paintings, and contemporary and specially comissioned photographs. Ranging widely over the body of Joyce's work (and referring especially to "Finnegan's Wake"), it also includes a chronology of Joyce's life, brief biographies of his friends and contemporaries, and bibliography. David Pierce focuses on the many different ways that Ireland, its people, and its history and culture shaped and were reflected in Joyce's work. He discusses the nature of Victorian Ireland, Joyce's Cork background, his family and education, his attitudes toward religion and sexuality, and the significance of Parnell and Tom Moore in Joyce's writing. He analyzes the influence of Joyce's wife, Nora, particularly in "Exiles" and "Ulysses". He looks at "Dubliners" in terms of Joyce's topographical imagination and understanding of social class, explores the author's celebration of Dublin as an Edwardian city, and shows the significance of cultural changes in the period. Examining three episodes of "Ulysses", he highlights Joyce's critique of modern Ireland. The book concludes with a discussion of "Finnegan's Wake" in the context of Joyce's exile in Europe, his attitudes towards European Jews, and his views of the Irish Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Pierce frankly acknowledges that this book is "entirely dependent on the labour of others." All he has done is "rearrange the material." His approach is biographical, cultural, and critical, taking up such Joycean topics as Joyce's childhood, Joyce and Parnell, Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies , the Edwardian Dublin, the topographical Dublin, feminism, nationalism, and Judaism. It all reads like a diverse selection of interesting Joycean tidbits. It also seems to aspire to the coffee table, for the text is enriched by a striking assortment of illustrations, from turn-of-the-century maps, portrait sketches, street scenes, and artifacts to contemporary artwork and stills from the John Huston movie based on Joyce's story, "The Dead." This book doesn't cohere, but the confirmed Joyce devotee will enjoy rummaging around in it.
- Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

'James Joyce's Ireland is the most detailed presentation yet of the cultural milieu that would have surrounded the young Joyce growing up in Dublin.' -- James Joyce Quarterly

`Scholarly and anecdotal, as enchanted by detail as Joyce himself. Pierce reproduces much evocative minutiae as well as the more predictable scenic views and some wonderful photographs of the writer and his family. This is the obvious Bloomsday present for 16 June.' -- Independent on Sunday

'James Joyce's Ireland may be the best introduction to Joyce ever written... A steppingstone to the future of Joyce criticism.’ -- - James Joyce Literary Supplement.

'the most detailed presentation yet of the cultural milieu that would have surrounded the young Joyce growing up in Dublin.’ -- - James Joyce Quarterly.

`At first sight a bulging, generous scrapbook of period and contagious pictures and reproductions of documents, some familiar, many not. But it seems that the text separating the delectable goodies is serious stuff... not just another canter round the city--very handsomely done. The value for money is excellent, so obviously a popular response is expected.' -- Books Ireland

`I doubt if there is a single Joyce reader or scholar who will not find something new and fresh in the illustrations... While the selection is often brilliant, so at times is their presentation.' -- Irish Studies Review

`Nobody with even the slightest interest in Joyce, literature, or Irish culture should bypass this thoughtful book that appeals so strongly to both the brain and the eye.' -- Wilson Library Bulletin

‘Nobody with even the slightest interest in Joyce, literature, or Irish culture should bypass this thoughtful book.’ -- - Wilson Library Bulletin.

‘Of the many ways to write an introduction to Joyce, this is one of the very best.’ -- - Times Literary Supplement.

‘a delightfully informative intellectual tour around Joyce's real and imaginary terrain.’ -- - The New York Times Book Review. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (June 24, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300050550
• ISBN-13: 978-0300050554
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,159,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Joyce, James

More About the Author

Now retired, I live in York in the UK where I have lived for nearly 35 years, over half my life. I write about aspects of my life in various books but, until The Long Apprenticeship: A Writer's Memoir, published in spring 2012, I haven't written an autobiography as such. I began publishing with my wife Mary Eagleton in a critical study of English fiction and social class (1979), but most of my publishing career has been taken up with books on Irish writing and in particular Yeats and Joyce. I spent five enjoyable years in the last decade as literary reviews editor for a Spanish Irish studies internet journal (www.estudiosirlandeses.org). I still do some reviewing and keep in touch with former students and friends round the world, but I haven't embarked on any major critical project since Reading Joyce (2008). That isn't strictly true because the memoir I have just completed includes a full bibliography, and I deliberately set my own book within a western tradition of memoir-writing. A memoir is like an underground stream which comes to the surface. I enjoyed writing it even if it forced me into a partial retreat from the world for the best part of two years. I continue to read widely, mostly in literature, and am constantly surprised by new authors and older material. Authors who die young must have missed out on so much that shelters under the term 'Literature'.