Literary Studies: It might be interesting for a future scholar to ponder the nature of the centenary commemoration surrounding June 16th this year. What would she/he make of it all?
The religious overtones, for instance: what with the readings from the good book itself, the feeding of the one thousand on O'Connell Street, the visiting of the sacred places and shrines associated with the author and with the work? What does it say about a nation that we choose to remember a writer and a book rather than the usual stuff of ritual memory in the West: wars and death and victory in battle?
It will be done no doubt, and would certainly make for an interesting footnote, but should not obscure the main object of celebration: James Joyce himself and, especially, Ulysses.
At the moment all things Joycean are open to critical appraisal. Two Joycean movies are treated in the Cork University Press series, Ireland into Film. Margot Norris deals with Joseph Strick's 1960s adaptation of Ulysses, giving a detailed account of its coming to screen, making good use of Strick's own thoughts on the film and the difficulties he encountered.
Norris acknowledges the mostly adverse critical attention it has received from Joycean experts, all of whom have their own idea as to what should be left in and left out and how it should look. Gerardine Meaney focuses on Pat Murphy's more recent film, Nora.
This is an altogether more interesting and challenging treatment because of the way in which the movie itself moves between the world of fact and biography and the reader's knowledge of Joyce's work. Meaney mixes film theory and feminist theory well in her interpretation of Joyce the author and Murphy's movie.
Some of the more interesting comments are left to the film-maker herself whose remarks on the narrative and visual construction are always enlightening.
Derek Attridge's The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce deals in general with Joyce's work. It is a second edition, but does have new essays on numerous developing aspects in Joycean Studies with the inclusion, for example, of Joseph Valente's consideration of 'Joyce and Sexuality' and Marjorie Howes's focus on 'Joyce, colonialism, and nationalism'. These essays offer introductions to numerous ways of locating Joyce in the wider world of theory and ideas, and are useful springboards back into the works themselves, each reading adding another layer to our understanding of the man and the work.
James Joyce's Ulysses: A Casebook gathers together a diverse selection of Joycean criticism from the past 70 years or so. Such an approach allows for essays that move between the realms of style and form, to more theoretical and ideological engagements with the novel.
Again, the reader can sample numerous theoretical approaches to reading Joyce, from Frank Budgen's illuminating conversations with the author contemporaneous with his writing of Ulysses, to Emer Nolan's intelligent rereading which reinserts a much-needed complexity to the usually simplistic understanding of his relationship to Irish nationalism.
The impression one gets from the wealth of Joycean criticism in all these books is that his work has become something of a mirror or a blank space wherein people from different backgrounds and cultures see themselves and their predicament played out.
Joyce, then, is continuously understood in relation to other subjects - it is, after all, always a case of Joyce "and" something else. A consequence of such thinking is that his work can only be seen in opposition to things: he is against religion, nationalism, the patriarchal world, imperialism and so on.
What can be forgotten is that, in a work like Ulysses, a space is opened up that gets beyond the easy binaries of a lot of critical thinking: it is a space that allows for a celebration of people and place. To be sure, not every character in Joyce's work is one you'd like to meet; nonetheless it is a world that in Joyce's representation of it exists on its own terms and demands respect because of that.
That world is magnificently brought to the fore in A Joycean Scrapbook which features a selection of the material appearing in the current exhibition James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland.
The popular culture of Joyce's Dublin, the music and the politics, are well represented here with cartoons, play bills and pamphlets in the first section. The second section presents material from Joyce's time in exile with particular attention paid to the often difficult and complex history surrounding the publication of his work.
This is a beautifully put together piece of work that brings to life aspects of the world out of which Joyce created some the most enduring art of the 20th century. Now, that is something we should all celebrate.
Derek Hand is a Lecturer in English in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He will be talking about James Joyce at this year's Parnell Summer School in Avondale, from August 15th-19th.
Ireland into Film: Ulysses. By Margot Norris, cork University Press, 102pp, €15.
Ireland into Film: Nora. by Geradine Meaney, cork University Press, 86pp, €15.
James Joyce's Ulysses: A Casebook. Edited by Derek attridge, Oxford University Press, 274pp, £12.99 pbk, £35 hbk.
The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Edited by Derek Attridge, Cambridge University Press, 290pp, £15.99 pbk, £45 hbk.
A Joycean Scrapbook: From the National Library of Ireland. Compiled by Katherine McSharry, Wordwell, 136pp, €15 pbk, €30 hbk.