James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination

“As Gillespie combines national, geographical, and historical contexts with close readings of Joyce’s works, the theme of exile takes on unexpected nuances, from spiritual displacements in Joyce’s neglected play Exiles to the trials of dealing with a ‘foreign’ language in Finnegans Wake.”—Margot Norris, editor of Dubliners

“Casts significant new light on Joyce’s writings by bringing out memorable ways in which the literal experience of exile enabled Joyce to recast retrospectively the exilic quality of living in Ireland, not simply as alienation but as a mixture of rancor and affection that colors the lives in all his fiction.”—John Paul Riquelme, editor of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The argument is buttressed by numerous readings of crucial passages whose meaning becomes more ambiguous or indeterminate when Joyce’s standing as an exile is taken into consideration. An important work of critical revaluation.”—Patrick A. McCarthy, author of Ulysses: Portals of Discovery

James Joyce left Dublin in 1904 in self-imposed exile. Though he never permanently returned to Ireland, he continued to characterize its capital city in his prose throughout the rest of his life. This volume elucidates the ways Joyce wrote about his homeland with conflicting bitterness and affection—a common ambivalence in expatriate authors, whose time in exile tends to reshape their creative approach to the world. Yet this duality has not been explored in Joyce’s work until now.

The first book to read Joyce’s writing through the lens of exile studies, James Joyce and the Exilic Imagination challenges the tendency of scholars to stress the writer’s negative view of Ireland. Instead, it showcases the often-overlooked range of emotional attitudes imbuing Joyce’s work and argues that attentiveness to these oscillating perspectives is necessary for a full understanding of Joyce’s canon.