James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality: Postcritical and Postsecular Reading in Dubliners and Ulysses

by Richard Rankin Russell

Overview

James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality reads Dubliners and Ulysses through studies of hospitality, particularly that articulated in the Lukan parable of the Good Samaritan. It traces the origins of the novel in part to the physical attacks on Joyce in 1904 Dublin and 1907 Rome, showing how these incidents and the parable were incorporated into his short story ‘Grace’ and throughout Ulysses, especially its last four episodes. Richard Rankin Russell discusses the rich theory of hospitality developed by Joyce and demonstrates that he sought to make us more charitable readers through his explorations and depictions of Samaritan hospitality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474499019
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2024
Edition description:	109,803
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Richard Rankin Russell is Professor of English and Graduate Program Director in the English department at Baylor University. His books include Seamus Heaney: An Introduction (Edinburgh, 2016); Seamus Heaney’s Regions (Notre Dame, 2014, Robert Penn Warren/Cleanth Brooks Award for literary criticism, Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Finalist—History); Modernity, Community, and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama (Syracuse, 2014); Bernard MacLaverty: New Critical Readings (Bloomsbury, 2013); Peter Fallon: Poet, Publisher, Editor, and Translator (Irish Academic Press, 2013); Poetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland (Notre Dame, 2010); Bernard MacLaverty (Bucknell, 2009) and Martin McDonagh: A Casebook (Routledge, 2007).

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: Haunted by Hospitality in "The Dead"

Chapter Two: Joyce, Scripture, and Autobiographical Rescue Narratives

Chapter Three: Rewriting the Good Samaritan Parable: The Fictional Rescue Narratives of "Grace" and "Circe"

Chapter Four: Bloom as Stranger and Samaritan in "Cyclops," "Oxen of the Sun," and "Circe"

Chapter Five: "in orthodox Samaritan fashion": The Parabolic Encounter between Stephen and Bloom in "Eumaeus"

Chapter Six: Home to "Ithaca" and "Penelope": Bloom’s Hospitality and Stephen and Molly’s Reactions

Chapter Seven: Enfleshed Ethics and the Responsibility of the Reader in the Good Samaritan Parable and the "Nostos" of Ulysses

Coda: Enfleshed Ethics and the Responsibility of the Reader in the Good Samaritan Parable and the "Nostos" of Ulysses

Works Cited

Index

Editorial Reviews

While Joyce scholars have long recognised that the theme of hospitality permeates his work, Richard Russell is the first to read both Dubliners and Ulysses through the lens of what he calls the "greatest of all parables." His argument is crisp, lucid and thoroughly readable.

James A. W. Heffernan

There is no doubt that the Good Samaritan parable provides a rich reading of Ulysses; and hospitality is certainly at the heart of Joyce’s mid-career ethics. The book is a sharp essay demonstrating the value of postcritical and postsecular readings – both discretely and intersecting – and to that extent Russell’s book is a collegiate read.

Irish Studies Review - Nicholas Taylor-Collins