The years of Bloom : James Joyce in Trieste, 1904-1920 / John Mc Court.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCourt, John, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Joyce, James, 1882-1941--Homes and haunts--Italy--Trieste.

Joyce, James.

Joyce, James, 1882-1941--Knowledge and learning--Trieste (Italy).

Joyce, James, 1882-1941.

Novelists, Irish--20th century--Biography.

Novelists, Irish.

English fiction--Italian influences.

English fiction.

Irish.

History.

Italy--Trieste.

Irish--Italy--Trieste--History--20th century.

Trieste (Italy)--Civilization.

Trieste (Italy).

Trieste (Italy)--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 306 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, [2000]

Summary:

Since the publication of Richard Ellmann's James Joyce in 1959, Joyce has received remarkably little biographical attention. The Years of Bloom, based on extensive scrutiny of previously unused sources and informed by the author's intimate knowledge of the culture and dialect of Trieste, is possibly the most important work of Joyce biography since Ellmann, re-creating this fertile period in Joyce's life with an extraordinary richness of detail and depth of understanding.

In Trieste, Joyce wrote most of the stories in Dubliners, turned Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and began Ulysses. Echoes and influences of Trieste are rife throughout Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Though Trieste had become a sleepy backwater by the time Ellmann visited there in the 1950s, McCourt shows that in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the city was a teeming imperial port, intensely cosmopolitan and polyglot. There Joyce experienced the various cultures of central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. He knew many Jews, who collectively provided much of the material for the character of Leopold Bloom. He encountered continental socialism, Italian irredentism, Futurism, and various other political and artistic movements whose subtle influences McCourt traces with literary grace and scholarly rigour. The Years of Bloom, a rare landmark in the crowded terrain of Joyce studies, will instantly take its place as a standard work.

Contents:

Part 1 Heading east 7

Part 2 A portrait of "tarry easty" 25

Part 3 Was ist eine Nation? 79

Part 4 La nostra bella Trieste 137

Part 5 Success in the shadow of war 191.

Notes:

Based on the author's thesis (Ph.D., University College Dublin).

Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-295) and index.

ISBN:

0299169804