Joyce and the Two Irelands by Willard Potts (review)

Abstract

YES,34, 2004 YES,34, 2004 3I9 3I9 from them all. The exercise is not without use: there are the seeds, for instance, of a very distinguishedpostcolonial reading of Ulyssesin McGee's book. The trouble is that they are given no space to grow. The book disintegratesinto a collection of partly related essays. More importantly,for all his concern with 'history',the only historical context that, for McGee, is truly crucial to Joyce studies is the contemporary Rawlsian academy, and the politics he addresseshas little or no historical substancebeyond it. Perhapshe ought to spend a few years in Derry. ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITYOF LONDON ANDREW GIBSON JoyceandtheTwoIrelands. By WILLARD POTTS. (LiteraryModernism Series)Austin: University of Texas Press. 2001. xi + 220 pp. [28.50. The 'two Irelands'implicatedin the title of this new studyofJamesJoyce's workare the Catholic and the Protestant,of course, but it is importantfor Willard Potts to read in a sectariandivisionacrossIrishsociety the widest culturalimplications.Joyce andtheTwoIrelands chartsin his fiction, drama, and criticalwritingsthe reaction of JamesJoyce notjust to the divisionsthat have definedhis homeland but to a variety of efforts to heal these rifts. Specifically, Potts wonders what reactionJoyce had to the 'Irish Revival', to the literary expression of Irish nationalism that asserted itself most clearly at the beginning of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly,the author discovers in Joyce's work an equivocal attitude towards all expressions of nationalismbroken only by signatureperiods of interestin all things Irish,brief but fervent intervalsthat punctuatedJoyce's life abroad on the continent. Potts begins with a surveyof the modern culturalhistoryof Ireland, concentrating on an importantthirty-yearperiod beginning in the I89os. While this is necessary background, some of this material is only tangentiallyconnected withJoyce, and the text really hits its stride once Potts turns his attention to Joyce's more dogmatic earlywritings:essaysand reviewswrittenin the firstyearsof the twentieth century. While he retreatedfrom specificpolitical issues behind Giordano Bruno's assertionthat writersshould seek a certain degree of aesthetic monasticism,Joyce's preferencefor art with an internationalgroundingboth connected him with a burgeoning modernismand estrangedhim from the earlyundertakingsof Revival writers . On the other hand, his I907 essay 'Ireland:Island of Saints and Sages' reveals a most pronounced interestin the Revival and in the conjugationof sectarianissues. The sum of this critical output underlines how Joyce's aloofness concealed a discerning mind capable of weighing the most contentious questions relevant to Irish culture. And while the author may have appeared aloof, his creative works gave voice to a well-defined understandingof issues that enabled him to use different approaches to nationalistconcerns for dramatic effect. A number of the stories in Dubliners, for example, engage social issuesand suggestof their authora keen critical eye, but his progressionfrom the manuscriptfor Stephen Herothrough to the publication of A Portrait oftheArtistas a Young Manindicatesan increasingdisillusionment with Irish nationalism.While the influence of continentaldrama on Exilesstandsin contrast to the work of Synge and Yeats, the play itself is sympathetic to Revival ideas. With Ulysses,Joyce extends his satirical reading of Irish nationalism to considerall expressionsof nationalism,underliningthroughthe violence and racism of the novel the dangers of partisancitizenship. from them all. The exercise is not without use: there are the seeds, for instance, of a very distinguishedpostcolonial reading of Ulyssesin McGee's book. The trouble is that they are given no space to grow. The book disintegratesinto a collection of partly related essays. More importantly,for all his concern with 'history',the only historical context that, for McGee, is truly crucial to Joyce studies is the contemporary Rawlsian academy, and the politics he addresseshas little or no historical substancebeyond it. Perhapshe ought to spend a few years in Derry. ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITYOF LONDON ANDREW GIBSON JoyceandtheTwoIrelands. By WILLARD POTTS. (LiteraryModernism Series)Austin: University of Texas Press. 2001. xi + 220 pp. [28.50. The 'two Irelands'implicatedin the title of this new studyofJamesJoyce's workare the Catholic and the Protestant,of course, but it is importantfor Willard Potts to read in a sectariandivisionacrossIrishsociety the widest culturalimplications.Joyce andtheTwoIrelands chartsin his fiction, drama, and criticalwritingsthe reaction of JamesJoyce notjust to the divisionsthat have definedhis homeland but to a variety of efforts to heal these rifts. Specifically, Potts wonders what reactionJoyce had to the 'Irish Revival', to the literary expression of...