Joyce's Voices

When a correspondent from Missouri wrote to Hugh Kenner and asked that he elaborate on his assertion that "Joyce began Ulysses in naturalism and ended it in parody," Kenner answered with this book. Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists—Joyce foremost among them—found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding—and enjoying more fully—the work of one of the world's greatest writers.

When a correspondent from Missouri wrote to Hugh Kenner and asked that he elaborate on his assertion that "Joyce began Ulysses in naturalism and ended it in parody," Kenner answered with this book. Joyce's Voices is both a helpful guide through Joyce's complexities, and a brief treatise on the concept of objectivity: the idea that the world can be perceived as a series of reports to our senses. Objectivity, Kenner claims, was a modern invention, and one that the modernists-Joyce foremost among them-found problematic. Accessible and enjoyable, Joyce's Voices is what so much criticism is not: an aid to better understanding-and enjoying more fully-the work of one of the world's greatest writers.

Choice

Kenner's work is an achievement of a polymath: it ranges from Jonathan Swift to Flaubert, and from Dickens to T. S. Eliot, circling around its two main concerns: Joyce's Ulysses and the death of objectivity as a privileged style in modern literature.

Hugh Kenner (1923)-born in Ontario, Canada-was one of the greatest literary critics of the twentieth century. He taught at several universities during his lifetime and was a frequent contributor to the National Review. His numerous critical books include The Pound Era, Joyce's Voices, Gnomon, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study, and Flaubert, Joyce and Beckett: The Stoic Comedians, several of which are forthcoming from, or are published by, Dalkey Archive Press.