James Joyce's fiction constantly engages with an Ireland whose present and past is marked by the long struggle to achieve full independence from Britain. Semicolonial Joyce is a collection of essays addressing the importance of Ireland's colonial situation in understanding Joyce's work. The volume brings together leading commentators on the Irish dimension of Joyce's writing, such as Vincent J. Cheng, Seamus Deane, Enda Duffy, Luke Gibbons, David Lloyd, and Emer Nolan, to present a range of voices rather than a single position on a topic which has had a major impact on Joyce criticism in recent years. Contributors explore Joyce's ambivalent and shifting response to Irish nationalism and reconsider his writing in the context of the history of Western colonialism. The essays both draw on and question the achievements of postcolonial theory, and provide insights into Joyce's resourceful engagement with political issues that remain highly topical today.
List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Note on references to Joyce's works; Introduction Marjorie Howes and Derek Attridge; 1. Dead ends: Joyce's finest moments Seamus Deane; 2. Disappearing Dublin: Ulysees, postcoloniality and the politics of space Enda Duffy; 3. 'Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort': geography, scale and narrating the nation Majorie Howes; 4. State of the art: Joyce and postcolonialism Emer Nolan; 5. 'Neither fish nor flesh'; or how 'Cyclops' stages the double-bind of Irish manhood Joseph Valente; 6. Counterparts: Dubliners, masculinity and temperance nationalism David Lloyd; 7. 'Have you no homes to go to?': Joyce and the politics of paralysis Luke Gibbons; 8. Don't cry for me, Argentina: 'Eveline' and the seductions of emigration propaganda Katherine Mullin; 9. 'Kilt by kelt shell kithagain with kinagain': Joyce and Scotland Willy Maley; 10. Phoenician genealogies and oriental geographies: Joyce, language and race Elizabeth Butler Cullingford; 11. Authenticity and identity: catching the Irish spirit Vincent J. Cheng; Index.
