Description

This casebook offers a comprehensive introduction to this landmark in modern fiction. The essays collected here will help first-time readers, teachers, and advanced scholars gain new insight into Joyce's semi-autobiographical story of an Irish boy's slow and difficult discovery of his artistic vocation. Mark Wollaeger's introduction provides an overview of the composition and early reception of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as a survey of some of the recurrent issues debated by literary critics. Essays by Hugh Kenner and Patrick Parrinder offer both indispensable overviews of the entire novel-its themes, structure, and idiom-and close attention to specific interpretive cruxes. Other essays include classic responses by Wayne Booth, Fritz Senn, Michael Levenson, Helene Cixous, and a newly revised and expanded version of Maud Ellmann's groundbreaking "Polytropic Man." Together the essays bring into focus the wide range of questions that have kept A Portrait fresh for the new millennium.

Reviews

"A fine collection of essays. The essays are of uniformly high quality and certainly would effectively introduce a student to some current critical modes as well as give an idea of the issues that have dominated Joyce criticism over the past fifty years or so."--R. Brandon Kershner, University of Florida

"Readers will appreciate this impressive collection of essays which brings together bold old and new criticism.... In total, these essays offer a fascinating introduction to the wide variety of criticism on Joyce's book, providing useful resources for students new to A Portrait as well as those who have studied it for years."--English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

Product Details

376 pages; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-515076-6ISBN10: 0-19-515076-7

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