"Stemming the Drizzle": A Report on the 2019 Dublin James Joyce Summer School, Dublin, Ireland, 30 June-7 July 2019

Abstract

"Stemming the Drizzle":A Report on the 2019 Dublin James Joyce Summer School, Dublin, Ireland, 30 June-7 July 2019 Casey Lawrence (bio) Despite convening under somewhat trying circumstances, this year's Dublin James Joyce Summer School was, as usual, a highlight of the summer conference circuit. Relocating the morning lecture series from its regular home in Newman House on Stephen's Green—unavailable due to construction on the historic building—to the James Joyce Centre, the School thrived in its new location. Attendees made the daily lunchtime trek down O'Connell Street and across the Liffey to Boston College for afternoon seminars in uncharacteristically warm weather, allowing first-time visitors of the city to see some of the streets through which Bloom ambled on 16 June 1904 and such Dublin landmarks as the Spire, Abbey Theatre, Trinity College, and Grafton Street. With the windows thrown wide open to enjoy a warm breeze, the Joyce Centre made the perfect venue for Joyceans young and old to learn from each other and share in the celebration of the author who brought them together in the city that his work brings to life. [End Page 238] The Summer School's academic program had something to offer everybody, with lecture topics ranging from the sciences of mathematics and logic, textual genetics, disability studies, and eco-criticism to broader topics of failure, rumor, ambiguity, and consciousness in Joyce's work. Ongoing seminars were led by Peter van de Kamp (Dubliners), Christine O'Neill (A Portrait), Terence Killeen (Finnegans Wake), and the venerated grandfather of Joyce studies, Fritz Senn (Ulysses), who traveled straight from the Trieste Joyce School to impart some of his vast knowledge of Joyce to assembled scholars from across generations. Well attended by enthusiasts, established scholars, early career researchers, and students alike, the School welcomed a group of American teens from Oak Park and River Forest High School whose enthusiasm brought an incredible energy to the discussion periods following lectures. Director Anne Fogarty, who would normally deliver the School's opening lecture, was sorely missed this year. In her stead, the Associate Director, Luca Crispi, kicked off the academic program with his talk, "Stephen Dedalus from A Portrait to Ulysses," which traced Joyce's method of repurposing old notes and even whole passages written for one project into another. As a first introduction to the concept of textual genetics for many of the students, Crispi's presentation did a fantastic job in outlining how Joyce's meticulous note-taking led to "the seamless continuity" of source material into the published works. Crispi's most striking example was that of the "Alphabet Notebook" at Cornell University, into which Joyce recorded an account of Oliver St. John Gogarty's "horse-like face." This note became Stephen's description of Gogarty/Buck Mulligan as "equine and pallid" in an abandoned chapter 5 of A Portrait, later incorporated in part into "Telemachus." The format of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School is unique in its focus on discussion and audience participation; the Oak Park students took full advantage of the time allotted for questions, probing Crispi about Joyce's notation method and showing eager engagement from the very first lecture. In a slight change from the published program, the second lecture was delivered by Trinity College's Sam Slote. Opening his talk, "All the Way from Gibraltar," with Anthony Burgess's assertion that "one has no need to visit the country to write about the country,"1 Slote discussed how Joyce was able to "fake it" when writing about a place he had never visited: Gibraltar. In a similarly genetic turn, Slote went over Joyce's sources for the "local color" of Gibraltar in Molly's memories, including guidebooks and the Encyclopædia Britannica, as well as those that helped Joyce fake it in terms of Dublin when his own memory simply could not suffice. Slote argued that Gibraltar and Dublin are continually confused, conflated, and "vaguened" so that many references could refer to either, thus creating a continuity [End Page 239] across time and geography between the two colonial spaces. The second day began with Keri Walsh of Fordham University who spoke on "Joyce's...