Before Daybreak: After the Race and the Origins of Joyce's Art Contributor(s): Owens, Cóilín (Author) |
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ISBN: 081306094X ISBN-13: 9780813060941 Publisher: University Press of Florida OUR PRICE: $27.67 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2015 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
Dewey: 823.912 |
Series: Florida James Joyce (Paperback) |
Physical Information: 0.79" H x 6" W x 9" (1.14 lbs) 352 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: "Demonstrates the richness and resonance (and importance to Joyce's emerging artistic sensibility) of even the least rich, most marginal of Joyce's early fictions. In particular, Owens's painstaking and illuminating investigation does rare justice to the technical complexities of Joyce's literary method. A fitting companion volume to his insightful James Joyce's Painful Case."--Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College Joyce's "After the Race" is a seemingly simple tale, historically unloved by critics. Yet when magnified and dismantled, the story yields astounding political, philosophic, and moral intricacy. In Before Daybreak, C il n Owens shows that "After the Race" is much more than a story about Dublin at the time of the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup Race: in reality, it is a microcosm of some of the issues most central to Joycean scholarship. These issues include large-scale historical concerns--in this case, radical nationalism and the centennial of Robert Emmet's rebellion. Owens also explains the temporary and local issues reflected in Joyce's language, organization, and silences. He traces Joyce's narrative technique to classical, French, and Irish traditions. Additionally, "After the Race" reflects Joyce's internal conflict between emotional allegiance to Christian orthodoxy and contemporary intellectual skepticism. If the dawning of Joyce's singular power, range, subtlety, and learning can be identified in a seemingly elementary text like "After the Race," this study implicitly contends that any Dubliners story can be mined to reveal the intertextual richness, linguistic subtlety, parodic brilliance, and cultural poignancy of Joyce's art. Owens's meticulous work will stimulate readers to explore Joyce's stories with the same scrutiny in order to comprehend and relish how Joyce writes. |