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Joyce and the Two Irelands
Willard Potts
Copyright Date: 2000
Published by: University of Texas Press
https://doi.org/10.7560/765917
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/765917
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Book Info
Joyce and the Two Irelands
Book Description:

Uniting Catholic Ireland and Protestant Ireland was a central idea of the "Irish Revival," a literary and cultural manifestation of Irish nationalism that began in the 1890s and continued into the early twentieth century. Yet many of the Revival's Protestant leaders, including W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and John Synge, failed to address the profound cultural differences that made uniting the two Irelands so problematic, while Catholic leaders of the Revival, particularly the journalist D. P. Moran, turned the movement into a struggle for greater Catholic power.

This book fully explores James Joyce's complex response to the Irish Revival and his extensive treatment of the relationship between the "two Irelands" in his letters, essays, book reviews, and fiction up toFinnegans Wake.Willard Potts skillfully demonstrates that, despite his pretense of being an aloof onlooker, Joyce was very much a part of the Revival. He shows how deeply Joyce was steeped in his whole Catholic culture and how, regardless of the harsh way he treats the Catholic characters in his works, he almost always portrays them as superior to any Protestants with whom they appear. This research recovers the historical and cultural roots of a writer who is too often studied in isolation from the Irish world that formed him.

eISBN: 978-0-292-79893-9
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. ix-x)
  4. Abbreviations Used
    Abbreviations Used (pp. xi-xii)
  5. CHAPTER ONE Sectarianism and the Irish Revival
    CHAPTER ONE Sectarianism and the Irish Revival (pp. 1-47)

    In a diary entry for 1930, W. B. Yeats recalls a day early in the Irish Revival when he and Douglas Hyde were out walking and heard people at work in a field singing words that Hyde recognized as his own. Yeats says he begged Hyde to ‘‘give up all coarse oratory’’ and to write more such songs as a way to ‘‘help the two Irelands, Gaelic Ireland and Anglo-Ireland so unite that neither shall shed its pride.’’¹ The two Irelands Yeats speaks of go by many names in addition to the ones he uses, among them ‘‘native and settler,’’...

  6. CHAPTER TWO The Critical Writings
    CHAPTER TWO The Critical Writings (pp. 48-67)

    Along with a few biographical details, the essays, book reviews, and other items collected inThe Critical Writingsgive a preliminary answer to the question asked at the end of Chapter 1: to what extent did Joyce embrace a militant Catholicism? The collection contains pieces that Joyce wrote before leaving Ireland in 1904, including book reviews written during his 1902–1903 sojourn in Paris, as well as his later work, written in Italy between 1907 and 1912. The first group of writings deals primarily with literature from a point of view bluntly antagonistic to Irish nationalism. Appearing to demonstrate the...

  7. CHAPTER THREE Dubliners
    CHAPTER THREE Dubliners (pp. 68-99)

    Insofar as Joyce wrote the stories inDublinerswith the idea that they would help transform the country, they all reflect a central notion of the Revival, but the movement itself also has a prominent place in the volume. The collection follows an arrangement that suggests the Revival’s growth: the Revival is simply alluded to in ‘‘A Little Cloud’’; and then later on, in ‘‘A Mother’’ and ‘‘The Dead,’’ it appears as a major subject. Though the relationship between Catholics and Protestants might not be considered a major subject inDubliners, this issue crops up early in the volume and...

  8. CHAPTER FOUR Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist
    CHAPTER FOUR Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist (pp. 100-123)

    The published pages ofStephen Herocontain a nearly complete version of the part of the novel that Joyce called ‘‘the University College episode’’ and that he later condensed into Chapter V ofA Portrait of the Artist. The episode, which often focuses on the manifestations of the Revival within UCD, contains Joyce’s most extensive account of the movement. It distinguishes a Griffithite political strain of cultural nationalism from an apolitical strain such as Moran advocated. Perhaps because Joyce inclined toward Griffith rather than Moran, the political strain figures more prominently inStephen Heroand is treated more sympathetically. For...

  9. CHAPTER FIVE Exiles
    CHAPTER FIVE Exiles (pp. 124-143)

    In his 1952 introduction toExiles, Padraic Colum took issue with critics’ habit of dwelling on the play’s debt to contemporary continental drama, particularly Ibsen. The situations in Joyce’s play, he said, ‘‘being motivated by a Catholic and not by a Protestant conscience, are different from the situations in an Ibsen play’’ (E8). The preoccupation with Joyce’s interest in Ibsen has obscured not only the Catholic elements inExilesbut also the play’s connections with the Irish theatre movement, the Revival, and Ireland generally.

    The stage directions identify the setting ofExilesas the ‘‘suburbs of Dublin’’ in the...

  10. CHAPTER SIX Ulysses
    CHAPTER SIX Ulysses (pp. 144-198)

    Richard and Robert’s youthful attempt to create a new life in Ireland resembles the moments in Irish history that Joyce cites in his ‘‘Saints and Sages’’ lecture when Protestants and Catholics joined forces in a national cause. Their alliance also exemplifies the popular Revival vision of the two cultures working together to reshape the country. The implication ofExiles, however, is that, whatever their relationships may have been in the past, the two cultures have become so divided that cooperation between them no longer is possible. InUlyssesJoyce lays greater stress than ever before on that division. Nowhere in...

  11. Notes
    Notes (pp. 199-210)
  12. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 211-216)
  13. Index
    Index (pp. 217-220)
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