Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press , Cambridge, 1998,
Description
Representations of 'the Jew' have long been a topic of interest in Joyce studies. Neil Davison argues that Joyce's lifelong encounter with pseudo-scientific, religious and political discourse about 'the Jew' forms a unifying component of his career. Davison offers new biographical material, and presents a detailed reading of Ulysses showing how Joyce draws on Christian folklore, Dreyfus Affair propaganda, Sinn Fein politics, and theories of Jewish sexual perversion and financial conspiracy. Throughout, Joyce confronts the controversy of 'race', the psychology of internalised stereotype, and the contradictions of fin-de-siècle anti-Semitism.
User reviews
LibraryThing member PhoebeReading
Davison provides a thorough background to the Irish, European, and conceivably Joycean conception of Judaism within the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and reflects on how these preconceptions might have coalesced into the ultimate Joycean Jew, Leopold Bloom. While his analysis is
Show More
thorough, I wish he had done a smoother job of establishing the possible formulations for determining Judaism, as the entire argument is reduced and relegated to a foot note. In this way, and others--lack of a broader historical context, or a thorough explanation of many of the historical events of the time period--this remains firmly criticism, and fails to speak to a broader audience. Which is a shame, because it certainly has the potential to speak to readers who are not Joyce critics. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
305 p.; 6 inches
ISBN
9780521636209
Local notes
Donated by Adele Rosalky from the Earle Hoffman Private LIbrary, April 2019