Consuming Joyce: A Hundred Years of Ulysses in Ireland

＂This book was crying out to be written.＂ The Irish Times
＂Scandalously readable.＂ Literary Review

James Joyce’s relationship with his homeland was a complicated and often vexed one. The publication of his masterwork Ulysses - referred to by The Quarterly Reviewas an ＂Odyssey of the sewer＂ - in 1922 was initially met with indifference and hostility within Ireland. This book tells the full story of the reception of Joyce and his best-known book in the country of his birth for the first time; a reception that evolved over the next hundred years, elevating Joyce from a writer reviled to one revered.

Part reception study, part social history, this book uses the changing interpretations of Ulysses to explore the concurrent religious, social and political changes sweeping Ireland. From initially being a threat to the status quo, Ulysses became a way to market Ireland abroad and a manifesto for a better, more modern, open and tolerant, multi-ethnic country.

John McCourt is Professor of English Literature at the University of Macerata, Italy and Vice-President of the International James Joyce Foundation. He is the author of Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland, The Years of Bloom: Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 which was translated into Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, and Japanese. He has edited many volumes including Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema, James Joyce in Context, and Reading Brendan Behan. He was Peter O’Brien Visiting Scholar at Concordia University in 2019.