Overview
In a radical new reading of Ulysses, Maria Tymoczko argues that previous scholarship has distorted our understanding of Joyce's epic novel by focusing on its English and continental literary sources alone. Challenging conventional views that Joyce rejected Irish literature, Tymoczko demonstrates how he used Irish imagery, myth, genres, and literary modes. For the first time, Joyce emerges as an author caught between the English and Irish literary traditions, one who, like later postcolonial writers, remakes English language literature with his own country's rich literary heritage.
The author's exacting scholarship makes this book required reading for Joyce scholars, while its theoretical implications—for such issues as canon formation, the role of criticism in literary reception, and the interface of literary cultures—make it an important work for literary theorists.