James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity
Culture, Biography, and 'the Jew' in Modernist Europe

'At every turn this superb study introduces fresh perspectives on an important subject.' James Joyce Literary Supplement

Neil R. Davison (Author), Anthony Julius (Foreword by)

9780521636209, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 September 1998

324 pages
22.7 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.455 kg

'[A] valuable and always interesting volume … Davison's scholarship is impressive.' Irish Studies Review

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.

Foreword Anthony Julius
Introduction
1. Silence: family values
2. Silence: Jesuit years: Clongowes and Belvedere
3. Silence: university years: the Church, Dreyfus, and aesthetics
4. Exile: excursion to the Continent, bitter return
5. Cunning and exile: Greeks and Jews
6. Cunning: Jews and the Continent: texts and subtexts
7. Cunning: the miracle of Lazarus times two: Joyce and Italo Svevo
8. Ulysses
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]