Reviewed by:

• Consuming Joyce: 100 Years of "Ulysses" in Ireland by John McCourt
• Joseph Brooker (bio)

It has often been said that James Joyce has received more critical attention than any writer of literature in English save William Shakespeare. A corollary, as with Shakespeare, is that an unusual amount has been published about this attention and about what may be called Joyce's reception as a whole. In earlier decades, sections of books catalogued these fortunes: a long sequence in Marvin Magalaner and Richard M. Kain's Joyce: The Man, the Work, the Reputation, and the critical afterword in the second edition of Harry Levin's James Joyce or Hugh Kenner's "Ulysses," for instance.¹ Then whole books documented aspects of Joyce's critical reception: Geert Lernout's The French Joyce, Neil Cornwell's James Joyce and the Russians, and Jeffrey Segall's Joyce in America.² Joseph Kelly's Our Joyce made a distinguished contribution based on archival research, and I attempted a synoptic narrative in Joyce's Critics.³

Curiously lacking, amid all this documentation, was a full-length history of Joyce's reception in Ireland. Now John McCourt offers one. While McCourt's subtitle refers to Ulysses, in practice, Joyce's whole corpus and career are involved. The book is arranged simply. Of its ten chapters, the first two describe "Joyce in Ireland before Ulysses" and "Ulysses in Court" (a familiar enough tale this, after the work of other scholars including Joseph M. Hassett's excellent account The "Ulysses" Trials⁴). The rest move chronologically from "Ulysses in Ireland in the 1920s" to "Millennial Joyce," each covering either a decade ("Coming of Age in the 1980s") or two ("Taking the Tower" describes both the 1960s and 1970s).

The parameters of "Irish reception" sometimes need to be flexible. In documenting Joyce's reception in Ireland, the book mentions the arrival of foreign scholars, from Richard Ellmann through the 1960s symposia participants to academic appointments in this century. Irish responses, meanwhile, sometimes occurred outside the country, whether from Irish ambassadors to Switzerland or Irish academics resident in the United States. But the book primarily records the responses of Irish people in Ireland. It cites early reviews and commentaries; obituaries and reflections on Joyce's death (notably one from Elizabeth Bowen⁵); poems that refer to Joyce by Thomas Kinsella, John Montague, or Seamus Heaney;⁶ and comments on the importance of Joyce from poets and novelists, from Edna O'Brien through Dermot Bolger to Eimear McBride.⁷ McCourt also chronicles [End Page 709] theatrical adaptations, including Alan McClelland's Bloomsday, which went unstaged in the late 1950s due to the objections of the Catholic hierarchy (132-34); Hugh Leonard's Stephen D, performed at the Gate Theatre and beyond in 1966; Marjorie Barkentin's "Ulysses" in Nighttown shown on the Abbey's Peacock stage in the 1970s; and Fionnula Flanagan's rendition of James Joyce's Women (148).⁸ Responses to Joyce include film adaptations shot in Ireland: Joseph Strick's Ulysses, Sean Walsh's Bloom, and Pat Murphy's Nora.⁹ In later chapters, the Joyce Estate emerges as a frequent block on such projects. McCourt's material extends into diverse areas of public life: the speeches of politicians in Dáil Éireann or the invocations of Joyce by both John F. Kennedy and Mary Robinson; the purchases of Joyce papers by the National Library of Ireland for considerable sums unthinkable in earlier decades; the attempts, often uneven since the 1960s, to keep the Sandycove Martello Tower open as a museum, while Joyce is also commemorated in other centers, museums, and statues. McCourt sweeps briskly from poets to playwrights, actors to presidents, ambassadors to ministers of tourism, as well as the journalists and columnists who provide much of the copy he quotes.

Professional literary critics are an important part of the story, but Consuming Joyce shows how comparatively fragmentary the Irish critical response was for several decades. Certain commentators like Niall Montgomery made dense essay-length contributions, but even John...

审核人：

• 消费乔伊斯：爱尔兰 100 年的《尤利西斯》约翰·麦考特 (John McCourt)
• 约瑟夫·布鲁克（生平）

人们常说，詹姆斯·乔伊斯 (James Joyce) 受到的关注比除威廉·莎士比亚 (William Shakespeare) 以外的任何英语文学作家都多。与莎士比亚一样，一个必然结果是，关于这种关注以及关于乔伊斯作为一个整体的接受程度的报道数量异常多。在早些时候的几十年里，一些书籍对这些命运进行了分类：Marvin Magalaner 和 Richard M. Kain 的《乔伊斯：人、工作、声誉》中的一长串序列，以及 Harry Levin 的James Joyce或 Hugh Kenner 的第二版中的批评性后记“尤利西斯”，例如。¹然后整本书记录了乔伊斯受到批评的各个方面：Geert Lernout 的The French Joyce，Neil Cornwell'詹姆斯·乔伊斯和俄国人，以及杰弗里·西格尔笔下的乔伊斯在美国。²约瑟夫·凯利的《我们的乔伊斯》在档案研究的基础上做出了杰出的贡献，而我在乔伊斯的《评论家》中尝试了一种概括性的叙事。^3个

奇怪的是，在所有这些文件中，缺少乔伊斯在爱尔兰受到接待的完整历史。现在 John McCourt 提供了一个。虽然麦考特的副标题指的是尤利西斯，但实际上，乔伊斯的整个语料库和职业生涯都涉及其中。本书安排简单。在它的十章中，前两章描述了“乔伊斯在尤利西斯之前在爱尔兰”和“法庭上的尤利西斯”（这是一个足够熟悉的故事，在其他学者的工作之后，包括约瑟夫·哈西特的精彩记述“尤利西斯”审判⁴）。其余的按时间顺序从“尤利西斯在 1920 年代在爱尔兰”到“千禧一代乔伊斯”，每个都涵盖十年（“1980 年代的成熟”）或两个（“夺取塔楼”描述了 1960 年代和 1970 年代）。

“爱尔兰接待”的参数有时需要灵活。在记录乔伊斯在爱尔兰受到的接待时，这本书提到了外国学者的到来，从理查德·埃尔曼到 1960 年代的座谈会参与者，再到本世纪的学术任命。与此同时，爱尔兰的反应有时会发生在国外，无论是来自爱尔兰驻瑞士大使还是居住在美国的爱尔兰学者。但该书主要记录了爱尔兰人在爱尔兰的反应。它引用了早期的评论和评论；乔伊斯之死的讣告和反思（尤其是伊丽莎白·鲍恩的一篇⁵）；Thomas Kinsella、John Montague 或 Seamus Heaney 提到乔伊斯的诗；^6个以及从埃德娜·奥布莱恩 (Edna O'Brien)、德莫特·博尔格 (Dermot Bolger) 到艾默尔·麦克布赖德 (Eimear McBride) 等诗人和小说家对乔伊斯重要性的评论。⁷ McCourt 还编年史[End Page 709]戏剧改编，包括艾伦·麦克莱兰 (Alan McClelland) 的《布鲁姆日》(Bloomsday)，由于天主教等级制度 (132-34) 的反对，该剧在 1950 年代末未上演；休·伦纳德的斯蒂芬·D，于 1966 年在盖特剧院及其他地方演出；Marjorie Barkentin 在 Nighttown 的《尤利西斯》于1970 年代在修道院的孔雀舞台上放映；以及 Fionnula Flanagan 对James Joyce 的 Women (148) 的演绎。⁸对乔伊斯的回应包括在爱尔兰拍摄的电影改编：约瑟夫·斯特里克、肖恩沃尔什的布卢姆和帕特墨菲的诺拉。⁹在后面的章节中，乔伊斯庄园经常出现在此类项目中。McCourt 的材料延伸到公共生活的各个领域：政治家在 Dáil Éireann 的演讲或约翰·F·肯尼迪和玛丽·罗宾逊对乔伊斯的祈求；爱尔兰国家图书馆以在前几十年无法想象的巨额价格购买了乔伊斯的手稿；自 1960 年代以来，为了让 Sandycove Martello 塔作为博物馆开放而进行的尝试往往参差不齐，而乔伊斯也在其他中心、博物馆和雕像中得到纪念。麦考特轻快地从诗人到剧作家，从演员到总统，从大使到旅游部长，以及提供他引用的大部分内容的记者和专栏作家。

专业文学评论家是故事的重要组成部分，但《消费乔伊斯》显示了几十年来爱尔兰的批评反应相对零散。某些像尼尔·蒙哥马利这样的评论员发表了密集的论文长度的贡献，但即使是约翰……