A Joycean Conc(h)ord

book reviews Stephen has fallen into. My point here is not to re-argue this complex critical issue; it is rather to say that the use that Joyce makes of Stephen's Lucerferian stance in Portrait, the attitude that he takes toward it and wishes us to take, is a crucial critical issue that influence study per se does not engage. Hogan knows the works of both Milton and Joyce very well and he has tried to assess honestly and carefully which of Milton's works Joyce knew and drew upon. For example, in an appendix discussing the Miltonic materials in Joyce's Trieste Library, Hogan straightforwardly acknowledges that Joyce's "Trieste library copies of Milton seem to have little value for a study of Milton's influence on Joyce" (211). If this study is less than satisfying, it is because some of the main elements of what are presumably Miltonic influence—e.g., the Fall, the figures of Adam and Eve, and Lucifer/Satan—are so broadly present in Western culture that we cannot separate what is distinctively Miltonic, and because some of Hogan's theoretical and critical claims are weakly grounded and unconvincing. Weldon Thornton William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Professor of English University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A joycean Conc(h)ord Matthew J. C. Hodgart and Ruth Bauerle. Joyce's Grand Operoar: Opera in Finnegans Wake. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. xiv + 341 pp. Cloth $49.95 Paper $24.95 A JOINT PRODUCTION of two veteran Joyceans (and a posthumous publication for the late Matthew Hodgart), this study is really two books, and hence less a duet than consecutive solos. The first, "Joyce's Opera Worlds," consists of five historical essays by Ruth Bauerle that describe in illustrative detail the operatic background on which Joyce's texts heavily rely. The second, a reference guide to opera in Finnegans Wake compiled mostly by Hodgart (with help from others), catalogues the operas, composers, characters, and singers mentioned or alluded to in the text. Both parts are useful, although wise readers will consume the reference guide to that riverrunning work with a large dose of salt. Bauerle, who has already added much to our knowledge of Joyce's musical heritage with her previous books, begins by sketching the history of opera, focusing particularly on what audiences in Joyce's Dublin would have heard. Her entertaining narrative is combined with 237 ELT 41 : 2 1998 remarks about Joyce's father's musical abilities and some rather contrived comparisons to Arturo Toscanini. In the second chapter, "Opera Geography," Bauerle portrays the operatic environment in the four cities where Joyce spent most of his life. Although at times this chapter devolves into lists of names and titles, it succeeds in proving beyond a doubt (though few Joyceans would have doubted) that Joyce's operatic interests form a major lyrical strain in his work. The section on Trieste is the strongest, probably because here Bauerle can concretely document the operas that Joyce actually attended. Some of the material here—such as the history of the Carl Rosa company-though interesting enough, pertains much more to Joyce's earlier work than to the Wake. (Readers interested in Joyce's earlier career are also likely to find the appendix compiled by Stephen Watt and Nona Watt, which lists all of the opera performances in Dublin between 1898 and 1904, to be one of the most valuable sections of the book.) Still, it is fascinating fun to learn more about the careers of those deceased singers mentioned at the Morkans' dinner in "The Dead," and to peruse the photos of people like the tenors Enrico Caruso and Giovannia Mario-who appears in the same costume worn by Leopold Bloom in one of his Nighttown masquerades. One glaring deficiency is that Bauerle fails to flesh out the larger cultural and political contexts in which music resides. For example, although she mentions the debate over whether operas performed for English-speaking audiences should be sung in Italian or English, she misses an opportunity to place it within the broader dispute about the English language that was raging in Ireland at the turn of the...