Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce

"Classically, it was with an enigma that Joseph Campbell entered the labyrinth of James Joyce. In 1927 Campbell went over to Paris to study medieval philology and Old French and Provencal, and almost immediately encountered Ulysses. When he got to Chapter Three, "Proteus," he was puzzled by the opening: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read..." He took his enigma to Sylvia Beach, at Shakespeare and Co., at 12 rue de l'Odeon. "I went around there in high academic indignation. And she gave me the clues to how to read it. And there you have it, how it changed my career."" "Campbell moved through the labyrinth of Joyce's creation for sixty years - writing, lecturing, reading Joyce's works to his students and to audiences nationwide, using as tools of analysis depth psychology, comparative religion, anthropology, and art history. His lectures and readings introduced two generations to the works of James Joyce. What Campbell discovered became the foundation for his work in comparative mythology and religion." "Mythic Worlds, Modern Words provides a representation of Campbell's published writing, lectures on Joyce, and exchanges with his audiences, from his obituary notice on Joyce in 1941 to lectures delivered within a few years of Campbell's death. This material has been arranged as running commentary on A Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. This book is an introduction to the major work of Joyce and a representative portrait of Joseph Campbell as a critic of Joyce. However, it is in itself a major contribution to Joyce criticism, the fruit of a lifetime's meditation on the works of James Joyce." "At least two major insights into Joyce emerge from this book. One: a description of Ulysses as a journey through the psyche of Everyman, discovering through encounters with the Triple Goddess the nature of the complete man. The other: a total explanation, based on Dante, of the works of Joyce."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved