Unlike many recent Joyce studies,
De-familiarizing Readings eschews the theoretical and ideological and instead plants itself on firmer ground. Its seven outstanding Joyce scholars share a love of the “stuff” of texts, contexts, and intertexts: data and dates, food and clothing, letters and journals, literary allusions, and other quotidian desiderata. Their inductive approaches - whether to
Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, or
Finnegans Wake - are thoroughly researched, argued with meticulous, even nit-picking, precision, and offer the pleasurable reading experience of forensic analysis. And in the end they provide the satisfaction of reaching persuasive conclusions that seem both striking and inevitable.
Bibliographical Note
Alan W. FRIEDMAN and Charles ROSSMAN: Introduction
Dubliners Tara PRESCOTT: “Guttapercha things”: Contraception, Desire, and Miscommunication in “The Dead”
Susan J. ADAMS: Joyce in Blackface: Goloshes, Gollywoggs and Christy Minstrels in “The Dead”
A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man David G. WRIGHT: Dating Stephen’s Diary: When Does
A Portrait of the Artist End?
Ulysses Austin BRIGGS: Is Bella Cohen Jewish? What’s in a Name?
Margot NORRIS: Stephen Dedalus’s Anti-Semitic Ballad: A Sabotaged Climax in Joyce’s
Ulysses Finnegans Wake Stephen WHITTAKER: The Shakespearean Demiurge in Joyce’s Forge
Alan SHOCKLEY: Playing the Square Circle: Musical Form and Polyphony in the
Wake Notes on Contributors