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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.