The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce

Abstract

James Joyce has a reputation for being one of modern literature's most difficult writers. This introduction gives students the necessary tools they will need to get the most out of reading him. It provides the essential biographical information and situates his life and works in broader cultural, historical, and literary contexts. Students will also find detailed examinations of the major works including Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. In addition, Bulson lets students see how Joyce evolved as a writer. This introduction also provides a brief history of the critical reception of Joyce's life and works and explains what a variety of critical approaches can teach us. A guide to further reading has been included for those interested in consulting some of the more influential secondary works. This accessible and lively introduction gives students everything they will need to get started reading, understanding, and appreciating Joyce.

In Search of Cultural and Personal Experience behind woman in James Joyce’s Dubliners

“…Much in similar vein, one of the female guests is depicted. The lady is not only dressed in clothes with girlish motifs but also behaves like a little child who 6 Again, for the sake of economy of space, we do not offer any quotations from Dubliners that could exemplify and illustrate the delimited senses, but, instead, give only references to the relevant and most representative passages in Joyce's collection. The number of the story is the same as in Dubliners.…”

Shifts of Time in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A Narratological Perspective

“…He endeavoured to see himself objectively, to assume a godlike poise of watchfulness and observance over the small boy he called Stephen and who was really himself. (Gorman, 1941, p. 133) Bulson (2006) attempts to assign a genre for this novel when he declares A Portrait "belongs to the genre of the Bildungsroman which is a "novel of education", and "the Kunstlerroman" which can be a novel of "artistic development" (p. 49). He says in these novels there is always a young person who struggles to achieve "experience" and "success" in his life (ibid.).…”

Ulysses: The Novel, the Author and the Translators

“…The narrative techniques in the first 3 episodes are, therefore, comparatively traditional. The third-person narrator as in the beginning sentence of the whole novel [2] Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. (U 1.…”

“…The last three episodes, "the Nostos", especially Episode 16 "Eumaeus", are written in a style of the elderly: sluggish, repetitive and full of cliché s. By this time, the long day of June 16, 1904 has come to an end, and at such a moment of midnight all the people-Bloom, Stephen, the drunken sailor and others at the cabman"s shelter, as well as Molly, who is already in bed and half-asleep-are feeling lethargic, and so is the style of the language. Suffice it to cite the beginning sentence of a paragraph in episode 16 as an illustration of verbosity and as a contrast to [2], the beginning sentence of "Telemachus".…”