The Varieties of Joycean Experience: (Anthem Irish Studies)

The Varieties of Joycean Experience is a collection of ten essays that display the wide range and diversity of perspectives and critical approaches that can be drawn upon to enrich our readings of James Joyce's works. With special attention to Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, these essays explore such problems as the difficulties these books pose to categories and summaries and our understanding of Joyce's composition methods. The book explores Joyce's ambiguities around death, scatology, and the weather to propose new understandings of these phenomena as key ways into Joyce's works. The book concludes with an examination of the tricky problem: what makes an interpretation untenable, and why do Joyce's works inspire far-fetched and even crackpot readings?

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Preface; 1. Categorical: “Meddlied Muddlingisms”: The Uncertain Avant- Gardes of Finnegans Wake; 2. Narratological: “Whole Only Holes Tied Together”: Joyce and the Paradox of Summary; 3. Compositional: Playing with Matches: The Wake Notebooks and Negative Correspondence; 4. Genetical: Revision Revisited; 5. Cerebral: “Cog It Out”: Joyce on the Brain; 6. Mythametical: Waking “for an Equality of Relations”; 7. Scatological: Mixplacing His Fauces; 8. Thanatological: “Don’t You Know He’s Dead?”: Postmortem Uncertainties; 9. Meteorological: Weathering the Wake : Barometric Readings of I.3; 10. Hysterical- Exegetical: Petitions Full of Pieces of Pottery; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author :
Tim Conley is Professor of English Language and Literature at Brock University, Canada. His books include Joyces Mistakes: Problems of Intention, Irony, and Interpretation, Burning City: Poems of Metropolitan Modernity (co-edited with Jed Rasula), and Useless Joyce: Textual Functions, Cultural Appropriations.

Review :
“In this superb collection of elegantly written essays, Tim Conley looks at Joyce’s texts through a variety of different perspectives in a clear and precise manner that takes Joyce’s whimsy seriously. Essential reading for all Joyceans.” — Sam Slote, Associate Professor, School of English, Trinity College Dublin “Tim Conley’s The Varieties of Joycean Experience is a book of essays arranged as “ten toptypsical readings” – among them, “Cerebral,” “Mythamatical,” “Scatological,” “Metrological,” and “Hysterical-Exegetical.” The book’s title, a node to William James, and the book’s content, a nod to various aspects of Joycean criticism, reflect Conley’s broader, heterogeneous literary interests, articulated here with erudition and occasional levity. A pleasure to read.” — Jolanta Wawrzycka, Professor, Department of English, Radford University “Tim Conley has established himself as a wide-ranging, provocative, and witty critic and scholar of James Joyce’s works. In ten demonstrations of Joycean experience, focused on Ulysses and mostly Finnegans Wake and each labeled straightforwardly (Narratological, Compositional, Meteorological) or whimsically (Mythametical), he explores such varied topics as the avant-garde, revision, consciousness, scatology and weather. The closing chapter, with its label of “Heretical-Exegetical” sounding like Hamlet’s Polonius or Ulysses’ “Ithaca” narrator, is a tour-de-force analysis of what Conley calls “specious, pathological, and even lunatic readings” that, because their authors sincerely believe their interpretations, come as close as anything in this commodious and rewarding book to William James’ varieties of religious experience.” — Michael Groden, author of The Necessary Fiction: Life with James Joyce’s Ulysses In keeping with its title, The Varieties of Joycean Experience holds something for everyone, from novice to seasoned readers of Joyce alike. Irish-studies scholars who work adjacently to Joyce studies might also find this text useful as Conley provides a compelling survey of major directions in recent Joyce scholarship.—Irish Literary Supplement