Description

In his pursuit of the unknown in Joyce’s works, Edmund Epstein has made new discoveries of Joyce through an astonishing range of refer­ences and documentation, from Hebrew to Classical and modern European thought. This book will be of immediate and invaluable significance not only to Joyce scholars but to students and readers of modern literature in general.

The pattern Epstein sees in Joyce’s works is the conflict of genera­tions, the recurring pattern of human nature which Joyce sought to discover and describe. Mr. Epstein follows Joyce’s working of the process through A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to its climax in Ulysses,and constantly refers to Finnegans Wake for corroboration and perspective. Valuable in itself for its new reading of Joyce, Epstein’s work offers new interpretations of themes and symbols which have heretofore puzzled Joyce scholars.

About the Author

Edmund L. Epstein is Associate Professor of English at Southern Illinois University. He edited The James Joyce Review.

Praise For…

“Long awaited in Joycean circles, this book is the most authoritative work to date on Joyce’s ‘A Portrait’… One espe­cially valuable chapter of this scholarly and original book deals with Stephen as dancer, or King David figure. Students of Joyce will henceforth need to come to terms with Epstein’s stimulating reading of the early work”—Virginia Quarterly Review

“Long awaited in Joycean circles, this book is the most authoritative work to date on Joyce’s ‘A Portrait’… One espe­cially valuable chapter of this scholarly and original book deals with Stephen as dancer, or King David figure. Students of Joyce will henceforth need to come to terms with Epstein’s stimulating reading of the early work”—Virginia Quarterly Review