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Joyce, Bloomsday, and Diasporic Identity: A Report from Melbourne

Joyce, Bloomsday, and Diasporic Identity: A Report from Melbourne Frances Devlin-Glass James Joyce's Ulysses is arguably the most-discussed novel of the twentieth century. A keystone of modernism, it often appears on "best books" lists, Irish or otherwise. Yet, Ulysses also surely ranks among the least read of canonical works. Some Joycean scholars have admitted as much: Morris Beja declared that the "books [are] so difficult that nobody really reads them. Or if anyone does, they're only English professors."1 An even more extreme position was proposed nearly thirty years ago by Colin McCabe, a psychoanalytic critic who, in a colorful rhetorical flourish, doubted the existence of readers beyond the author himself: [Joyce] entertained some notion of the common reader to whom his texts would be available. But this purely imaginary audience did not exist and the real audience to whom the texts are thus necessarily addressed is an isolated individual and the only possible individual: Joyce himself.2 In a more recent book on the so-called "Joyce wars," Julie Sloan Brannon acknowledges the appropriation of Joyce by an elite of scholars. She believes the process began as long ago as the 1921 Little Review pornography case, which drove a wedge between erudite, literarily trained personnel who could not be http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png New Hibernia Review Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas

Joyce, Bloomsday, and Diasporic Identity: A Report from Melbourne

New Hibernia Review , Volume 11 (2) – Jun 21, 2007

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Publisher
Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 The University of St. Thomas. All rights reserved.
ISSN
1534-5815
Publisher site
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Abstract

Frances Devlin-Glass James Joyce's Ulysses is arguably the most-discussed novel of the twentieth century. A keystone of modernism, it often appears on "best books" lists, Irish or otherwise. Yet, Ulysses also surely ranks among the least read of canonical works. Some Joycean scholars have admitted as much: Morris Beja declared that the "books [are] so difficult that nobody really reads them. Or if anyone does, they're only English professors."1 An even more extreme position was proposed nearly thirty years ago by Colin McCabe, a psychoanalytic critic who, in a colorful rhetorical flourish, doubted the existence of readers beyond the author himself: [Joyce] entertained some notion of the common reader to whom his texts would be available. But this purely imaginary audience did not exist and the real audience to whom the texts are thus necessarily addressed is an isolated individual and the only possible individual: Joyce himself.2 In a more recent book on the so-called "Joyce wars," Julie Sloan Brannon acknowledges the appropriation of Joyce by an elite of scholars. She believes the process began as long ago as the 1921 Little Review pornography case, which drove a wedge between erudite, literarily trained personnel who could not be

Journal

New Hibernia ReviewCenter for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas

Published: Jun 21, 2007

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