Joyce's Revenge

The Ireland of Ulysses was still a part of Britain. This book is the first comprehensive, historical study of Joyce's great novel in the context of Anglo-Irish political and cultural relations in the period 1880-1920. The first forty years of Joyce's life also witnessed the emergence of what historians now call English cultural nationalism. This formation was perceptible in a wide range of different discourses. Ulysses engages with many of them. Indoing so, it resists, transforms, and works to transcend the effects of British rule in Ireland. The novel was written in the years leading up to Irish independence. It is powered by both a will to freedom and a will to justice. But the two do not always coincide, and Joyce does not place his art in the service of anyexisting political cause. His struggle for independence has its own distinctive mode. The result is a unique work of liberation - and revenge.

[a] superb study ... It is hard to pay sufficient tribute to Gibson's keenly detailed research and grasp of nuance in his discussion ... Joyce's Revenge deserves to become one of the landmarks in criticism devoted to Ulysses. Several chapters alone are worth the price of the book ... Shaprly and lucidly written, his book is accessible to readers who are not Joyce critics., Andrew Gibson has written a book to be mined for decades to come for its unqiue historicaL insight, its extraordinary attention to detail and its powerful theoretical grasp. Joyce's Revenge is the kind of rare book one compulsively recommends to students and friends., Andrew Gibson's is easily one of the most serious of academic books to have appeared on Joyce in recent years. It is densely researched, full of ideas, and well-embedded in current academic questions, and is sure to become a familiar point of reference in future debates as well as a standard to which subsequent researchers will have to aspire., Review from previous edition The book's achievement and its considerable claim on the reader's attention arise from two virtues: the consistency of the interpretative perspective from chapter to chapter and the abundance of eye-opening, contextualizing historical detail. Many readers will learn a great deal about the Irish contexts of Joyce's writing, from the Great Famine until the early 1920s, though the book's primary focus is the period 1880-1920. Even readers who are historically well-informed are unlikely to have anticipated Gibson's deft evocations of Joyce's transformations of contradictory perspectives., Joyce's Revenge makes a significant and distinctive contribution to Joyce studies, and it deserves a wide readership. The author is impressively well read in English and Irish cultural history, and the book identifies and explores an aspect of this history about which most Joyceans, perhaps, know less than they might. Among the books on Joyce I've studied recently this is perhaps the most absorbing read, cover to cover, of all of them.

Andrew Gibson is Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Royal Holloway, University of London.