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This book offers a fundamental and comprehensive re-evaluation of one of Joyce's most pervasive themes. By showing that betrayal was central to how Joyce understood and depicted the difficulties and terrors at the heart of all relationships, this book re-conceives Joyce's approach to history, politics, and the other. Leaving behind the pathologizing discourses by which Joyce's interest in betrayal has been treated as an 'obsession,' this book offers a vision of Joyce as both dramatist and theorist of betrayal. It demonstrates that, rather than being compelled by some unconscious urge to produce and reproduce textual betrayals, Joyce had a deep and hard-won conception of the specific dramatic energies wrapped up in the language and structures of betrayal and repeatedly found ways to make use of this understanding in his work.
List of contents
Introduction.- Chapter 1. Writing Drama, Writing Betrayal.- Chapter 2. "Boyhood" as "Death".- Chapter 3. "A nation exacts a penance".- Chapter 4. "Like thieves in the night".- Chapter 5. Betrayal, Stagnation, and the Family Romantic in Ulysses.- Chapter 6. Betraying Bloom.- Chapter 7. Sexual Betrayal in "Penelope".- Coda.- Bibliography.
About the author
James Fraser completed his thesis under the supervision of Derek Attridge at the University of York, UK. He has since lectured at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia, and is currently lecturing in English at the University of Exeter. He spent several years as an editor of
Modernism/modernity and currently carries out work on literary modernism.
Summary
This book offers a fundamental and comprehensive re-evaluation of one of Joyce’s most pervasive themes. By showing that betrayal was central to how Joyce understood and depicted the difficulties and terrors at the heart of all relationships, this book re-conceives Joyce’s approach to history, politics, and the other. Leaving behind the pathologizing discourses by which Joyce’s interest in betrayal has been treated as an ‘obsession,’ this book offers a vision of Joyce as both dramatist and theorist of betrayal. It demonstrates that, rather than being compelled by some unconscious urge to produce and reproduce textual betrayals, Joyce had a deep and hard-won conception of the specific dramatic energies wrapped up in the language and structures of betrayal and repeatedly found ways to make use of this understanding in his work.
Additional text
“Joyce & Betrayal serves as a provocation to those involved in ethical criticism, even to the extent of providing an intelligent and useful corrective. … Fraser does more than fill a gap in Joyce studies. This book should call upon us to see Joyce, and his writing of relationships both political and personal, in a new light.” (Janine Utell, James Joyce Literary Supplement, Vol. 32 (1), 2018)
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"Joyce & Betrayal serves as a provocation to those involved in ethical criticism, even to the extent of providing an intelligent and useful corrective. ... Fraser does more than fill a gap in Joyce studies. This book should call upon us to see Joyce, and his writing of relationships both political and personal, in a new light." (Janine Utell, James Joyce Literary Supplement, Vol. 32 (1), 2018)
