The Value of James Joyce

This book explores the writings of James Joyce from his early poetry and stories to his final avant-garde work, Finnegans Wake.

Margot Norris (Author)

9781107583160, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 March 2016

160 pages
21.5 x 13.8 x 1 cm, 0.22 kg

'No scholar has contributed more to the ongoing critical project of reading James Joyce's works than Margot Norris … As is her critical custom, Norris has again produced an important guide for both virgin and veteran readers. There is great value in The Value of James Joyce.' Karen R. Lawrence, James Joyce Quarterly

Margot Norris' The Value of James Joyce explores the writings of James Joyce from his early poetry and short stories to his final avant-garde work, Finnegans Wake. His works include some of the most difficult and challenging texts in the English literary canon without diminishing his impressive popularity beyond the scope of academia. A democratic impulse may be counted as an important feature of this paradox: that Joyce's stylistic and linguistic experiments never lose their focus on a world of characters whose everyday activities comprise the stories of life in Ireland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, even as some of the most famous texts are given structures derived from Ancient Greek literature. The Value of James Joyce examines not only the significance of the ostensibly ordinary but the function of natural and urban spaces, classical and popular culture, and the moods, voice, and language that give Joyce's works their widespread appeal.

1. Introduction
2. The significance of the ordinary
3. The complexities of place
4. Cultures, old and new
5. Moods, voices, and language.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]