Work in Progress: Joyce Centenary Essays - Hardcover

Work in Progress contains a separate essay on each of Joyce’s major works(Dubliners, A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake),with recognized Joyce schol­ars examining in each a central critical problem.

Morris Beja examines Dubliners from the perspective of the “epiphany,” a concept for­mulated by the young Joyce. Richard Peter­son finds a rhythmic flow inA Portrait that helps us see its narrative structuring more clearly. Shari and Bernard Benstock exploreUlysses to discern how movement and spa­tiality function in its narrative. Patrick Mc­Carthy considers howFinnegans Wake and its audience are necessarily symbiotic partners.

In the second grouping of essays Edmund Epstein and Fritz Senn each investigate how Joyce handles—or manipulates—language. Looking at three decades of criticism, Mar­garet Church demonstrates where the study of the Viconian cycle and stream-of-con­sciousness has led toward an understanding of the role of time in Joyce’s fiction. Sheldon Brivic adduces a Joycean psychology from the works that offers an additional dimension to the study of the texts. Suzette Henke traces the growing maturity of Joyce’s atti­tude toward women. Completing the collec­tion, Father Robert Boyle examines the reli­gious ethos present in Joyce’s work.