Joyce's Voices [Paperback]

Hugh Kenner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1979

When a "correspondent from Missouri," wrote to Hugh Kenner and asked that he elaborate on his assertion that "Joyce began Ulysses in naturalism and ended it in parody," Kenner answered with this book. Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists--Joyce foremost among them--found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding--and enjoying more fully--the work of one of the world's greatest writers.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The volume is easy to handle and a delight to read. And Kenner's leaping wit, his metaphors, his transitions from insight to insight, his lively attention to Joyce's invention these qualities make it difficult, if you pick it up one evening, not to finish it before turning off the light." --Donald Hall, National Review

"Kenner's work is an achievement of a polymath: it ranges from Jonathan Swift to Flaubert, and from Dickens to T. S. Eliot, circling around its two main concerns: Joyce's Ulysses and the death of objectivity as a privileged style in modern literature." --Choice

"As always, Kenner is original, provocative, stimulating, occasionally perverse, and immensely readable. . . . The book offers important new insights into Joyce's art." --Library Journal --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Hugh Kenner (1923-2003) was one of the greatest literary critics of the twentieth century. He taught at several universities during his lifetime and was a frequent contributor to the National Review. His numerous critical books include The Pound Era, Joyce's Voices Gnomon, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study, and Flaubert Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians several of which are forthcoming from or are published
by Dalkey Archive Press. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 133 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (October 26, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520039351
• ISBN-13: 978-0520039353
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,757,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The First and Only Satisfactory Explanation, January 7, 2004

By 

T. Lum (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Joyce's Voices (Paperback)

This brilliant, witty little book is simply the most penetrating essay ever written on the greatest novel of the 20th century, James Joyce's Ulysses. For some odd reason, no critic before Kenner (or since) ever paid much attention to the most salient feature of Ulysses: its stylistic variousness, from the limpid Edwardian tones of its opening chapters through the long internal monologues of Bloom and Molly to the countless genre parodies interlarded throughout. All other critics have been content to dismiss it as a mere humorous quirk by Joyce, unrelated to the main point of the novel. Kenner shows that, in fact, it goes to the very heart of the novel: it is how the modern artist reinvokes the muse.

Kenner's explanation of Joyce's choices is absolutely brilliant. And along the way we get an insightful short history of the objective style and its problems, as well as numerous witty, perceptive asides on sundry matters. This is how literary criticism ought to be written.

What a shame this great little book is out of print. If you're even slightly interested in modern literature, grab a used copy immediately.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joyce's Voices, July 12, 2006

By 

D. W. Bang (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Joyce's Voices (Paperback)

If you're a modern day graduate student (or worse, a professor), you know that modern scholars aren't allowed to write the way Kenner wrote. More's the pity, too: Joyce's Voices is one of the most illuminating short works of criticism, even by New Critics' standards, which for stylistic agility were remarkably high. As Kenner said, he was almost solely responsible for putting the university at which he worked on the map, and it was that level of nonchalant genius that permeates this work.

Viewed first through a comparison between "objective" or "empirical" treatments of experience by other authors, Kenner shows the ways that Joyce sought to illuminate observed experience through a new means: the lens of style for its own sake. Without resorting to the jargon or jingoism that so commonly pervades academia, Kenner reveals Joyce's talent for pursuing his muse through a panopoly of styles and stylistic gestures that leaves one more capable of understanding, and therefore appreciating, Ulysses than ever before.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine, fine essays on Joyce, January 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Joyce's Voices (Paperback)

Well-written essays, concise, and enlightening. Some of Kenner's points blew my mind--and I've been reading Joyce for 20 years (already). Definitely worth a shot.