Reading James Joyce is a ready-at-hand compendium and all-encompassing interpretive guide designed for teachers and students approaching Joyce's writings for the first time, guiding readers to better understand Joyce's works and the background from which they emerged. Meticulously organized, this text situates readers within the world of Joyce including biographical exploration, discussion of Joyce's innovations and prominent works such as Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, surveys of significant critical approaches to Joyce's writings, and examples of alternative readings and contemporary responses. Each chapter will provide interpretive approaches to contemporary literary theories and key issues, including end-of-chapter strategies and extended readings for further engagement. This book also includes shorter assessments of Joyce's lesser-known works-critical writings, drama, poetry, letters, epiphanies, and personal recollections-to contextualize the creative and social environments from which his most notable publications arose. This uniquely comprehensive guide to Joyce will be an invaluable and comprehensive resource for readers exploring the influential world of Joyce studies.

Reading James Joyce is a ready-at-hand compendium and all-encompassing interpretive guide designed for teachers and students approaching Joyce's writings for the first time, guiding readers to better understand Joyce's works and the background from which they emerged. Meticulously organized, this text situates readers within the world of Joyce including biographical exploration, discussion of Joyce's innovations and prominent works such as Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, surveys of significant critical approaches to Joyce's writings, and examples of alternative readings and contemporary responses. Each chapter will provide interpretive approaches to contemporary literary theories and key issues, including end-of-chapter strategies and extended readings for further engagement. This book also includes shorter assessments of Joyce's lesser-known works-critical writings, drama, poetry, letters, epiphanies, and personal recollections-to contextualize the creative and social environments from which his most notable publications arose. This uniquely comprehensive guide to Joyce will be an invaluable and comprehensive resource for readers exploring the influential world of Joyce studies.

This Norton Critical Edition includes: The 1890 (Lippincott's Magazine) version and the 1891 (book) version of the novel. Under the editorial guidance of Wilde scholar Michael Patrick Gillespie, students have the opportunity to comparatively read and analyse both texts of this controversial novel. Editorial matter by Michael Patrick Gillespie. "Backgrounds" and "Reviews and Reactions" sections that allow readers to gauge The Picture of Dorian Gray's sensational reception and to consider the heated public debate over art and morality that followed-including Oscar Wilde's vehement replies to individual critics. Seven critical essays-six of them new to the Third Edition-that address the novel's major themes: aestheticism, decadence and vice. Contributors include Joseph Carroll, Nils Clausson, Emily Eells, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Richard Haslam, Donald L. Lawler and Ellen Scheible. A chronology and a selected bibliography.

Branding Oscar Wilde traces the development and perception of Wilde's public persona and examines the impact of interpretations of his writing. Through calculated behavior, provocative language, and arresting dress, Wilde self-consciously created a brand initially recognized by family and friends, then by the British public, and ultimately by large audiences over the world. That brand changed over the course of his public career-both in the way Wilde projected it and in the way it was perceived. Comprehending the fundamental elements of the Wilde brand and following its evolution are integral to a full understanding of his art. The study focuses on how branding established important assumptions about Wilde and his work in his own mind and in those of his readers, and it examines how each stage of brand development affected the immediate responses to Wilde's writings and, as it continued to evolve, progressively shaped our understanding of the Wilde canon.

"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Joseph Donohue, Regenia Gagnier, and Karl Beckson. "Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, among them George Bernard Shaw s famous dissenting view and the American assessment by H. F. "Essays in Criticism" includes six diverse assessments of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Camille Paglia, Christopher Craft, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Peter Raby, and Richard Haslam. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."

Branding Oscar Wilde traces the development and perception of Wilde's public persona and examines the impact of interpretations of his writing. Through calculated behavior, provocative language, and arresting dress, Wilde self-consciously created a brand initially recognized by family and friends, then by the British public, and ultimately by large audiences over the world. That brand changed over the course of his public career-both in the way Wilde projected it and in the way it was perceived. Comprehending the fundamental elements of the Wilde brand and following its evolution are integral to a full understanding of his art. The study focuses on how branding established important assumptions about Wilde and his work in his own mind and in those of his readers, and it examines how each stage of brand development affected the immediate responses to Wilde's writings and, as it continued to evolve, progressively shaped our understanding of the Wilde canon.

"Backgrounds" includes essays on Wilde and the 1890s by prominent cultural critics Karl Beckson, Sharon Marcus, and Michael Patrick Gillespie. "Early Reviews and Reactions" collects contemporary responses to The Importance of Being Earnest, including George Bernard Shaw's famous dissenting review and other commentary by H. G. Wells, Hamilton Fyfe, and William Archer. "Essays in Criticism" includes seven diverse assessments-six of them new to the Second Edition-of Wilde and the play by E. H. Mikhail, Burkhard Niederhoff, Christopher S. Nassaar, Clifton Snider, Brigitte Bastiat, Eibhear Walshe, and Maneck H. Daruwala. A chronology and selected bibliography are also included.

For the past seventy years the discipline of film studies has widely invoked the term national cinema. Such a concept suggests a unified identity with distinct cultural narratives. As the current debate over the meaning of nation and nationalism has made thoughtful readers question the term, its application to the field of film studies has become the subject of recent interrogation. In ""The Myth of an Irish Cinema"", Michael Patrick Gillespie presents a groundbreaking challenge to the traditional view of filmmaking, contesting the existence of an Irish national cinema. Given the social, economic, and cultural complexity of contemporary Irish identity, Gillespie argues, filmmakers can no longer present Irishness as a monolithic entity.The book is arranged thematically, with chapters exploring cinematic representation of the middle class, urban life, rural life, religion, and politics. Offering close readings of Irish-themed films, Gillespie identifies a variety of interpretative approaches based on the diverse elements that define national character. Covering a wide range of films, from John Ford's ""The Quiet Man"" and Kirk Jones' ""Waking Ned Devine"" to Bob Quinn's controversial ""Budawanny"" and ""The Bishop's Story"", ""The Myth of an Irish Cinema"" signals a paradigm shift in the field of film studies and promises to reinvigorate dialogue on the subject of national cinema.

A study that must be read by all scholars and students of Joyce. Since its appearance in 1922, James Joyce's novel Ulysses has remained extremely popular, never having gone out of print. Since the expiration of its copyright in the early 1990s, almost every major press in the US and England has produced an edition of the novel. This widespread public interest, in turn, has led well-known literary critics--from T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound to Terry Eagleton and Homi Bhabha--to attempt to explain the intricacies of the great novel. Debate continues over even the most fundamental aspects of its plot, characterization, and themes. Every year, more and more scholars offer insights into the structure and style of Joyce's writing, the significanceof his imagery, the consequences of his ideological dispositions, the association between his fictional representations and a myriad of cultural, social, and communal institutions and beliefs. Merely remaining cognizant of the range of views of Ulysses now offered has become a daunting task for any student of Joyce, especially in view of the explosion of critical viewpoints available to today's critics. While no single work could fully synthesize all that has been written on Ulysses, this book distinguishes the features of major methodological trends and important critical studies that have shaped our sense of Joyce's novel in recent years.

This collection presents, in a single volume, key seminal essays in the study of James Joyce. Representing important contributions to scholarship that have helped shape current methods of approaching Joyce's works, the volume reacquaints contemporary readers with the literature that forms the basis of ongoing scholarly inquiries in the field. Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies makes this trailblazing scholarship readily accessible to readers. Offering three essays each on Joyce's four main works (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake), editor Michael Patrick Gillespie provides a contextual general introduction as well as short introductions to each section that describe the essays that follow and their original contribution to the field. Featuring works by Robert Boyle, Edmund L. Epstein, S. L. Goldberg, Clive Hart, A. Walton Litz, Robert Scholes, Thomas F. Staley, James R. Thrane, Thomas F. Van Laan, and Florence L. Walzl, this is a volume that no serious scholar of Joyce can be without.

This is the first critical edition of Exiles, Joyce's only extant play and his least appreciated work. A. Nicholas Fargnoli and Michael Patrick Gillespie contend that the play deserves the same serious study as Joyce's fiction and stands on the cutting edge of modern drama. Their introduction situates Exiles in the context of Irish history and Joyce's other works, highlighting its often-overlooked complexity. The text of the play is newly annotated and unregularized, appearing as Joyce originallyintended. Containing a variety of critical responses to the text, including an interview with a recent director of the play, this edition establishes Exiles as an important component of Joyce's canon.

James Joyce left Ireland in 1904 in self-imposed exile. Though he never permanently returned to Dublin, he continued to characterize the city in his prose throughout the rest of his life. This volume elucidates the ways Joyce wrote about his homeland with conflicting bitterness and affection - a common ambivalence in expatriate authors, whose time in exile tends to shape their creative approach to the world. Yet this duality has not been explored in Joyce's work until now. The first book to read Joyce's writing through the lens of exile studies, James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination challenges the tendency of scholars to stress the writer's negative view of Ireland. Instead, it showcases the often-overlooked range of emotional attitudes imbuing Joyce's work and produces a fuller understanding of Joyce's canon.

"Locked in the Family Cell" is the first book on Ireland to provide a sustained and interdisciplinary analysis of gender, sexuality, nationalism, the public and private spheres, and the relationship between these categories of analysis and action. Kathryn Conrad examines the writers and activists who are resistant to simplistic nationalist constructions of Ireland and its subjects. She exposes the assumptions and the effects of national discourses in Ireland and their reliance on a limited and limiting vision of the family: the heterosexual family cell.
By actively situating theoretical readings and concerns in practice, Conrad follows the lead of scholars such as Lauren Berlant, Gloria Anzaldua, Ailbhe Smyth, and others who have encouraged dialogue not only among scholars in different academic disciplines but between scholars and activists. In doing so she provides not only a critique of interest to scholars in a variety of fields but also a productive political intervention.

"Balanced, clear, and judicious . . . [it] examines all of Wilde's oeuvre, from essays through novel, plays, and last works; and it does so, notably, by examining Wilde and his era in generous scope. . . . This book has authority and thoroughness."--Roy Gottfried, Vanderbilt University Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity presents an inclusive approach to Wilde criticism. It highlights the diversity in Wilde's writing, suggests strategies for reading, and leaves the reader to decide how best to apply them. In the first critical approach to Wilde's entire canon based on reader-response theory, Michael Patrick Gillespie examines the historical and social contexts in which the works are received. He synthesizes over a century of criticism, highlighting specific elements while ignoring others. Citing multiplicity as the defining feature of Wilde's artistic consciousness, Gillespie maintains that any other approach gives short shrift to central aspects of Wilde's aesthetics. In his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde wrote, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written." He then adds, disingenuously, "that is all." Gillespie identifies the diverse features that make Wilde's works well written. Michael Patrick Gillespie is professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, and author of The Picture of Dorian Gray: "As the World Sees Me" and (with A. Nicholar Fargnoli) James Joyce A to Z.

Confronting a host of assumptions, misprisions, and prejudices, A. Nicholas Fargnoli and Michael Patrick Gillespie contend that Joyce's play, Exiles, deserves the same serious study as his fiction and stands on the cutting edge of modern drama.

Many intelligent, enthusiastic individuals approach conversations about films as an extension of the pleasures derived while watching them. Love for movies and enthusiasm for discussion makes many people want to attain a better understanding of what they have seen and to develop a greater skill in talking articulately about their experiences. This sophisticated midpoint between theorizing and plot summary is not as difficult to achieve as some might assume, and "it's so cool" should only be the starting point. Since their introduction just before the turn of the last century, the vast majority of narrative films have followed the same structure, a method that eventually came to be called Classic Hollywood Cinema. Using that basic narrative form, a range of different types or genres emerged to explore particular themes and issues from clearly defined assumptions and perspectives. In each of these categories, fundamental elements that make up any film adapted to the subject of the genre and took on increasingly complex significance, while maintaining the familiar structure that contributes so much to the understanding of a particular movie and to the expectations that viewers brought to all. Understanding these structures and elements enables one to speak with discernment about any number of movies, whether one has seen them or not.

Since the 1960 publication of her first novel, "The Country Girls," award-winning Irish writer Edna O'Brien has been both celebrated and maligned. Praised for her lyrical prose and vivid female characters and attacked for her frank treatment of sexuality and alleged sensationalism, O'Brien and her work seem always to spawn controversy, including the past banning in Ireland of several of her works. O'Brien's attention to "women's" concerns such as sex, romance, marriage, and childbirth has often relegated her to critical neglect at best and, at worst, outright contempt. This essay collection promises to be a long overdue critical reevaluation and exciting rediscovery of her oeuvre.
"Wild Colonial Girl "situates O'Brien in Irish contexts that allow for an appraisal of her significant contribution to a specifically Irish women's literary tradition while attesting to the potency of writing against patriarchal conventions. Each chapter's clear and detailed readings of O'Brien's fiction build a convincing case for her literary, political, and cultural importance, providing an invaluable critical guide for an enriched appreciation of O'Brien and her work.

For the past seventy years the discipline of film studies has widely invoked the term national cinema. Such a concept suggests a unified identity with distinct cultural narratives. As the current debate over the meaning of nation and nationalism has made thoughtful readers question the term, its application to the field of film studies has become the subject of recent interrogation. In ""The Myth of an Irish Cinema"", Michael Patrick Gillespie presents a groundbreaking challenge to the traditional view of filmmaking, contesting the existence of an Irish national cinema. Given the social, economic, and cultural complexity of contemporary Irish identity, Gillespie argues, filmmakers can no longer present Irishness as a monolithic entity.The book is arranged thematically, with chapters exploring cinematic representation of the middle class, urban life, rural life, religion, and politics. Offering close readings of Irish-themed films, Gillespie identifies a variety of interpretative approaches based on the diverse elements that define national character. Covering a wide range of films, from John Ford's ""The Quiet Man"" and Kirk Jones' ""Waking Ned Devine"" to Bob Quinn's controversial ""Budawanny"" and ""The Bishop's Story"", ""The Myth of an Irish Cinema"" signals a paradigm shift in the field of film studies and promises to reinvigorate dialogue on the subject of national cinema.

The author of such classics as ""Dubliners"", ""A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"", ""Ulysses"", ""Finnegans Wake"", and more, James Joyce is regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time. Known for his experimental use of language, Joyce endured controversy surrounding much of his work, including one of the most famous censorship trials in history. ""Critical Companion to James Joyce"" examines this groundbreaking Irish novelist by exploring his work and influences, including family, friends, relatives, and acquaintances, as well as important places where he lived and worked. In this single-volume reference, admirers, general readers, and lovers of literature will discover hundreds of entries covering every aspect of Joyce's life and work. Coverage includes: a biography of Joyce; synopses and critical discussions of all Joyce's published work, with extensive analyses of the major fiction titles; profiles of significant members of Joyce's family and social circle; discussions of intellectual and literary influences on Joyce; accounts of censorship and legal battles; and characters in his fiction. Additional material includes: a working outline of Finnegans Wake; and the Ulysses schema.

The author of such classics as ""Dubliners"", ""A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"", ""Ulysses"", ""Finnegans Wake"", and more, James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of all time. Known for his experimental use of language, Joyce endured controversy surrounding much of his work, including one of the most famous censorship trials in history. ""Critical Companion to James Joyce"" examines this groundbreaking Irish novelist by exploring his work and influences, including family, friends, relatives, and acquaintances, as well as important places where he lived and worked. In this single-volume reference, admirers, general readers, and lovers of literature will discover hundreds of entries covering every aspect of Joyce's life and work. Coverage includes: a biography of Joyce; synopses and critical discussions of all Joyce's published work; profiles of significant members of Joyce's family and social circle; discussions of intellectual and literary influences on Joyce; and accounts of censorship and legal battles. Additional material includes: a working outline of Finnegans Wake; and the Ulysses schema.

A favorite of library and community reading groups, William Kennedy is best known for his novels Ironweed and Flaming Corsage. This eminently readable book provides a helpful introduction to students and others interested in his work. With engaging finesse, Michael Patrick Gillespie provides a keen analysis of Kennedy's best-known works, a firm base for interpretation, and a better understanding of the cultural world that shapes the characters and informs the plots of Kennedy's novels.

Rather than laying down what one should see when reading Kennedy's works, the book moves to the next stage of exploring diverse responses to Kennedy's canon, broadening the reader's awareness of the range of alternative strategies and perspective.

Gillespie begins with an introduction that lays out the imaginative context for Kennedy's work. Subsequent chapters, in three parts, provide extended treatments of his early work, key elements in the first three Albany novels, and finally the maturity of his overall fiction.

This text provides an introduction to students and others interested in William Kennedy's work. It provides an analysis of Kennedy's best-known works, a firm base for interpretation, and a better understanding of the cultural world that shapes the characters and plots. Rather than laying down what one should see when reading Kennedy's works, the text moves to the next stage of exploring diverse responses to Kennedy's canon, broadening the reader's awareness of the range of alternative strategies and perspective. It begins with an introduction that lays out the imaginative context for Kennedy's work. Subsequent chapters, in three parts, provide extended treatments of his early work, key elements in the first three Albany novels, and finally the maturity of his overall fiction.

This collection of essays is the first in 15 years to review the current state of theory on James Joyce's ""Ulysses"", and this volume comes more than 100 years after the fictitious Leopold Bloom steps into the novel, a day Joyceans celebrate as Bloomsday. The contributors - well known for their work in James Joyce studies - each provide three assessments in their areas of specialization: a history of the best criticism to date, a timely updating of critical positions, and an agenda for future examination. In clear, accessible language, the collection examines the insights readers can expect from particular modes of inquiry and offers an informed view of theoretical approaches and interpretive trends. For new Joyce scholars, the book provides a highly readable summary of existing criticism. For seasoned Joyceans, it offers a timely and important review of the methodologies that have made significant contributions to understanding the novel. In addition, it surveys an array of feminist scholarship on ""Ulysses"" and will stimulate new projects for feminist criticism on the issues of choice and agency.

In some ways prefiguring the dramas in its creator's life, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fictional model of the moral contradictions pervading late Victorian society. Oscar Wilde's Faustian tale of a beautiful young man trading his soul for the promise of eternal youth sparked controversy upon its appearance in 1890, a decade in which Wilde experienced the heights and depths of notoriety as society's wit and dandy, as its chief spokesman for the aesthetic "art for art's sake" movement, and ultimately as its embittered and destitute outcast. In The Picture of Dorian Gray: "What the World Thinks Me", Michael Patrick Gillespie contributes a penetrating analysis to Wildean studies, a volume at once accessible to students and valuable to scholars. Taking up "The Extratextual Milieu", Gillespie delineates the historical and literary contexts in which Dorian Gray appeared and traces the critical reception to it; offering close "Readings and Rereadings", he examines elements of imagination, ethics, aesthetics, and sensuality in the work. He further demonstrates that the narrative's appeal to a multitude of viewpoints allows for broad interpretations of the novel, prompting critics to see in it a range of authorial concerns and visions. Written with care, thoroughness, and grace, The Picture of Dorian Gray: "What the World Thinks Me" will be welcomed by students, librarians, and scholars. Enhancing the study's usefulness are a chronology of Wilde's life and works, a bibliography, and notes and references.