Ashplant
Reading, Smashing, and Playing Ulysses
Benstock, Bernard. Critical Essays on James Joyce’s Ulysses. Boston, Mass: G K Hall, 1989.
Related topics:
Catholicism
Irish History Transformed
Judaism
Race and Ethnicity
Religion
Union and Division
Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/critical-essays-on-james-joyces-ulysses/oclc/246888755&referer=brief_results
Part of a series on influential British literature, Critical Essays presents the history of Ulysses-centered criticism. Critical Essays follows this scholarship chronologically, beginning in the 1930's with Carl Jung's response and ending in the 1980s with Patrick McGee. Special emphasis is given to "Nausicaa" (U 13), with eight critical essays focused on the episode.
The first three essays, by Jung, Litz, and Cronin, grapple with issues of plot and form in Ulysses. John Z. Bennet's more obscure work, on the "Unposted Letters" of Ulysses, offers a close reading of Bloom's married life. Hyman writes about the lives of Dublin Jews, while Gottfried focuses on the power of Joyce's syntax and language, wrapping up the first section of the compilation.
The second part of Critical Essays deals exclusively with "Nausicaa." While Critical Essays on the whole attempts to show how literary thinking about Ulysses has developed, the focus on "Nausicaa" shows how critical thinking and understanding of a single episode has changed over time. For example, Gilbert and Bludgen write as friends of Joyce, taking a casual view of Ulyssian complexities. Blamires follows with an examination of "Nausicaa" that considers the importance of Joyce's Roman Catholic roots; another piece of religious criticism, an essay by Stanley Sultan on Old Testament significance, follows. Senn, French, and Peake each consider multiple perspectives as they look critically at the importance of style and context in "Nausicaa."
The final section of Critical Essays works towards "prediction [for] the future of Ulysses studies" (239). Included in this forecast are predictions for Marxist criticism, a shift in focus to the latter half of Ulysses, and increased attention to Joyce's stylistic innovation.
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