Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 279
Ulysses: A New Reader’s Edition by James Joyce, edited by Danis Rose
Trade Paperback; 30.00 Euro / 36.00 USD / 24.00 UK; 768 pages
Even before its first publication in 1922, Ulysses dominated the literary landscape. It has generated diverse and animated responses from readers and critics alike, eliciting superlatives both positive and negative. Encompassing everything human – urination, defecation, masturbation, crepitation, menstruation, fornication, insemination, paturition and expiration – it entered the world as at once the most obscene and the most brilliant of novels wherein Joyce strove to answer the question that bedeviled him: Is life worth living? To this end Joyce immersed himself in the Dublin of 1904, in a ludic procession of minor characters, and in his cast of principal players – the artist (Stephen Dedalus), the man in the street (Leopold Bloom) and the woman who said yes (Molly Bloom) – fashioning a sustained, unparalleled tour-de-force of writerly genius.
As a text, Ulysses is locked inside a series of boxes, the brazen keys to which are closely guarded by zealots passionate in their custodianship. In his internationally debated, best-selling, prosecuted and now banned Reader’s Edition, Danis Rose sought to overcome the limitations imposed on the capacity of the ‘text’ to continue to be meaningful, critically, creatively and culturally. In response, the custodians saw to it that his edition was suppressed. In counter-response, with the New Reader’s Edition, Rose demonstrates the continuing creativity of the model he championed, as Ulysses reappears, renewed!
A Joycean Scrapbook from the National Library of Ireland
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 136 pages, colour and black-and-white photographs throughout [Add To Basket]
New research in the archives of the National Library of Ireland has unearthed a treasure trove of vivid pictorial material relating to the popular culture of the early twentieth-century Dublin, which was also, of course, the popular culture of much of early twentieth-century Britain. The National Library has gathered a selection of this material together for its Bloomsday centenary exhibition, ‘James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland.’ Much of this material, together with a selection of other images, is represented in this pictorial resource book. It will be of interest to students of Joyce and students of the history of popular culture alike, as well as to those who simply want to gain an impression of what life was like a hundred years ago.
Ulysses Unbound: A Reader’s Companion to James Joyce’s Ulysses by Terence Killeen
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 260 pages
This book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible guide to James Joyce’s masterpiece. Each of its eighteen episodes is discussed individually. A summary of each episode is provided and an account of the part of Homer’s Odyssey to which the episode corresponds. This is followed by an analysis of the style of the particular episode. A broader discussion takes the episode’s principal themes and function and places them in the context of the overall development of the novel. Annotations are also provided on some of the main characters and historical events in the book. These focus on the reality behind the fiction – the real people who provided so much of the book’s material and who appear sometimes under their own names and sometimes in thin disguises. There is a glossary of some of the terms in languages other than English that pepper the text. The book features an overall reading of Ulysses, a brief account of Joyce’s life, and an account of the textual and publishing history of the book.
The Scandal of Ulysses: The Life and Afterlife of a Twentieth Century Masterpiece by Bruce Arnold
Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 344 pages [Add To Basket]
James Joyce’s Ulysses has been the subject of scandal from first publication in 1922. Initially denounced as obscene, subsequently banned in Britain and the US, it never failed to arouse controversy. When this book first appeared, twelve years ago, it was described as ‘the sensational life of a twentieth-century masterpiece’ and ‘the definitive biography’. In 1992, with the ending of copyright, the sensational, scandalous part of the life of Ulysses seemed to be drawing to a close. This was far from the truth. A new phase was about to open with the change in the law on copyright. And the book, in the mid-1990s, was plunged once more into conflict with the James Joyce Estate going to court to protect its rights.
This revised edition brings the story up to date. It describes the sad fate of John Kidd, once the knight in shining armour challenging the Joyce establishment, now discredited in Boston, without his James Joyce Center and with no edition of Ulysses to offer; the resurrection of Hans Walter Gabler, who reputation was assaulted by Kidd and seemed irrevocably damaged, but was then recovered and made whole again; the battle between Danis Rose and the James Joyce Estate over yet another edition of the book, ending up in the famous copyright court case of the 1990s; and how a new army of Joyceans took the place of the old. This expanded and updated edition is a masterful work of literary detection.
Dissecting Irish Politics edited by Tom Garvin, Maurice Manning and Richard Sinnott
Hardback; 40.00 Euro / 48.00 USD / 32.00 UK; 260 pages
Written by friends and former students, this volume of essays is a tribute to Brian Farrell, in his multiple roles as political scientist, teacher and broadcaster. Farrell’s work dealt with three areas and the essays in this book address each of them. Thus, in relation to ‘the origins and sources of the Irish political system and Irish political culture’, the book includes essays on the creation of the Irish political elite, on de Valera and democracy and on the pre-history of the Irish party system. In the area of ‘political institutions and governance’, it includes a chapter on the role of the ombudsman by a former ombudsman and one on the role of the Taoiseach by a former Taoiseach. Finally, the boo turns to the subject of ‘political communication’, where Farrell balanced the dual role of professor and practitioner with consummate ease. As well as honouring Mr. Farrell, it also provides a host of insights and arguments for academics and students from a range of disciplines, for people in the media, for politicians and political strategists and, finally, for the wider body of citizens to whom, ultimately, all of Farrell’s work was addressed.
Native and Natural: Aspects of the Concepts of ‘Right’ and ‘Freedom’ in Irish by Peter McQuillan
Paperback; 50.00 Euro / 60.00 USD / 40.00 UK; 284 pages [Add To Basket]
This book examines the development of a number of concepts such as ‘duchas, dual, duthaigh and saoirse’. The aim of the book is to establish the affiliations between these concepts and the sometimes catastrophic changes that beset the culture in which they played a defining role. Approaches current in the field of linguistic anthropology are used in an effort to integrate the examination of linguistic structure into the study of history and culture. The book combines a cultural with a philological approach in a unique and powerful fashion and applies it to a range of Irish books of historical interest. It brings aspects of linguistic theory out of the specialist arena into a more accessible forum for readers of Irish literature and theory. The book also clarifies the relationship between language structure and ideology.
Nora by Geraldine Meaney
Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 86 pages [Add To Basket]
Pat Murphy’s third feature film, Nora (2000) is based on Brenda Maddox’s 1988 biography of Nora Barnacle, the wife of James Joyce. The film is on one level a sumptuous historical romance, on another a feminist biopic, on yet another a complex meditation on the relationship between high modernist art and ordinary human relationships. It challenges the ways in which history and sexuality have been constructed in Irish film throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Both the biography and the film Nora explore the nature of sexual and aesthetic freedom. But whereas Maddox’s biography illuminated an independent-minded and resilient woman, Murphy’s film also offers both a feminist and a postmodern critique of the ethics and aesthetics of modernism. The author of this book investigates the complex relationships between these two texts, and locates the film in the context of new developments in costume drama and historical film in the 1990s.
Making the Grand Figure: Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1641-1770 by Toby Barnard
Hardback; 50.00 Euro / 60.00 USD / 40.00 UK; 500 pages, illustrations [Add To Basket]
In this pioneering study of the material culture of Stuart and Hanoverian Ireland, the author reveals a hitherto unsuspected richness and diversity of lifestyle, habitat and mentality. The book abounds with quirky people and vivid scenes, and amounts to a striking reappraisal of Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy. The compass of the book is impressively wide, from the governing elits of Dublin Castle to the varied metropolis of Dublin itself, and to provincial towns and the countryside beyond. Looking yet further, it follows the Irish overseas to Britain and to the continent of Europe. What emerges is a world more crowded with stylish buildings, gardens, pictures and belongings than has often been imagined.
Through such everyday articles as linen shirts, wigs, silver teaspoons, pottery plates and engravings, the author evokes a striking variety of lives and attitudes. Possessions, he shows, even horses and dogs, highlighted and widened divisions, not only between rich and poor, women and men, but also between Irish Catholics and the Protestant settlers. Displaying fresh evidence and unexpected perspectives, the book throws important new light on Ireland during a formative period. Its discoveries, set within the context of the ‘consumer revolution’’ gripping Europe and North America, allow Ireland for the first time to be integrated into discussions of the pleasures and pains of consumerism.
Byrne’s Dictionary of Irish Local History by Joseph Byrne
Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 24.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 350 pages. [Add To Basket]
This book is the authoritative desk reference for all local historians. It contains hundreds of local history terms explained, from earliest times to c.1900, in an A-Z listing which is fully cross-referenced. What was an angel? Castle chamber? Raskins? A Cunningham acre? Letters patent? Where do you go to find out what a Brunswick club was? How do you find out the meanings of legal terms associated with the courts and land conveyancing? This dictionary attempts to answer such questions for the Irish local historian. Also included are numerous entries relating to national and regional institutions such as parliament and the courts, administrative structures, religion, education, historical records, land law, lay associations, political movement, architecture and archaeology.
The Victorian Visitor in Ireland: Irish Tourism 1840-1890 by Donal Hogan
Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 120 pages, with black-and-white photos throughout [Add To Basket]
This book is an exploration of Irish tourism in the Victorian age. It draws on the experiences and accounts of Victorian visiting such locations as Dublin, Killarney, the Giant’s Causeway and sea-side resorts such as Bray, Portrush and Kilkee – not to mention Lisdoonvarna, spa resort and perennial favorite of all health conscious Victorians. The book captures the Victorians on holiday through the camera lens, principally through a selection of photographs from the Lawrence Photographic Collection.
The Story of Irish Dance by Helen Brennan
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 188 pages [Add To Basket]
The acknowledge authority on Irish dance, originally published in 1999.
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