Dubliners by James Joyce, and: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (review)

Two recent editions of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man bring fresh annotations, biographical sketches, and a new array of contextual materials that make these works more accessible for first-time readers, while also offering veteran Joyce scholars and teachers numerous opportunities for expanding the critical conversation. The Broadview Press edition of Dubliners, edited and annotated by Keri Walsh, commences with a stellar introductory essay in which Walsh explains Dubliners' rocky road to publication within an informative discussion that weaves together biographical and cultural backgrounds with close readings of numerous characters and situations in the collection. Walsh's entertaining prose moves competently and gracefully among many aspects of Dublin life and Irish history that have an immediate bearing on the stories and shows as much with brief but effective glimpses at relevant moments from the fiction. The essay frames some of the mysterious questions and fundamental ambiguities that permeate the stories as much as the gritty realism of Dublin, "the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal," as Joyce famously remarked (LettersI 64).

Looking beyond Ireland, Walsh's introduction positions Dubliners somewhat Janus-like in the global literary tradition and notes that it offers a backward look at nineteenth-century naturalism (Gustave Flaubert and Leo Tolstoy are both mentioned) and a progressive anticipation of the emerging modernism. It addresses the tension between Joyce's place among Irish Revivalists and cosmopolitan European writers. Regarding the former, Walsh offers useful insights into Joyce's complicated relationship with W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, citing class difference and generational divide but also clashes of personality and ideology. In describing how Dubliners forms a counterpoint to the Revivalists on issues of Irish cultural and racial essentialism, it is extremely well articulated and worth quoting at length:

For Joyce, the danger of trying to define an Irish race or temperament, in addition to the inherent racism of any such quest for purity, was that it could divert attention from the many prosaic realities that needed addressing in the present. To that end, Joyce resisted the lyrical impulses of the Celtic Revival and the movement's tendency to present Ireland as a rural, mystical idyll. In Irish writings of the 1890s, particularly those of Yeats, Irishness had become a gateway to fantasy and lyricism, and Ireland a place that could be marketed to international audiences without forcing readers to contend with the political and economic injustices of imperial occupation. It is not that Joyce's own aesthetic is utterly bereft of lyricism and fantasy, but these are both sparingly and strategically employed and always placed in relation to the psyches and situations of contemporary characters.

(24)

For two notable examples, Walsh points to "The Dead" and "A Little Cloud," with their direct but compartmentalized and self-conscious invocations of Revivalist style and sentiment.

Deftly juggling and ordering so many layers of concerns, Walsh's essay gives an ideal opening performance, drawing out questions and alerting readers to the details and controversies of the stories, while refraining from editorializing or providing a simple, singular answer. In this sense, it makes a nicely polished critical looking glass that opens up many reflective possibilities for readers of Dubliners. If there is any oversight, it might be in matters of literary form or style, which are briefly discussed under the heading of "Publication and Reception" but might merit a section of their own. But Walsh steers more towards the direction of cultural contexts and literary movements, and in those areas one reaches the end of the essay armed with an abundance of useful topics and relevant questions to carry into the stories. A helpful brief chronology of Joyce's life follows the introduction.¹

The five appendices compile a remarkable range...