The Joyce of Everyday Life

Part of James Joyce’s genius was his ability to find the poetry in everyday life. For Joyce, even a simple object like a table becomes magical, ＂a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment.＂ How might we learn to regain some of the child-like play with language and sense of delight in the ordinary that comes so naturally to Joyce?

The Joyce of Everyday Life teaches us how to interpret seemingly mundane objects and encounters with openness and active curiosity in order to attain greater self-understanding and a fuller appreciation of others. Through a close examination of Joyce’s joyous, musical prose, it shows how language provides us with the means to revitalize daily experience and social interactions across a huge, diverse, everchanging world.

Acclaimed Joyce scholar Vicki Mahaffey demonstrates how his writing might prompt us to engage in a different kind of reading, treating words and fiction as tools for expanding the boundaries of the self with humor and feeling. A book for everyone who loves language, The Joyce of Everyday Life is a lyrical romp through quotidian existence.

VICKI MAHAFFEY is Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A Guggenheim fellow, she has also published over forty articles and has authored several books, including Reauthorizing Joyce, States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Experiment, and Modernist Literature: Challenging Fictions.