Davison, Neil R. (Joyce, James; Bornstein, George)

James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity: Culture, Biography, and "the Jew" in Modernist Europe with: Ephemera

ISBN: 0521551811
Cambridge, England UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. First Edition. Hardcover. "Representations of "the Jew" have long been a topic of interest in (James) Joyce studies; in James Joyce, Ulysses, and the construction of Jewish identity Neil R. Davison argues that Joyce's lifelong encounter with pseudo-scientific, religious, and political discourse about "the Jew" forms a unifying component of his career. Davison offers new biographical material to support the claim that "the Jew" was a dynamic aspect of Joyce's imagination from youth to adulthood, and presents a detailed reading of Ulysses to show how Joyce draws on Christian folklore, Dreyfus Affair propaganda, Sinn Fein politics, and theories of Jewish sexual perversion and financial conspiracy. Inscriptions of "the Jew" in Ulysses form an attack on the authority of the discourse of anti-Semitism and evince the realist narrative buried beneath the pyrotechnics of Joyce's writing. Throughout, Joyce confronts the controversy of "race," the psychology of internalized stereotype, and the contradictions of fin-de-siecle anti-Semitism." (front flap) An intensive, enlightening biographical-critical study of James Joyce (1882-1941), the canonical Irish-expatriate author, focusing on his masterpiece Ulysses as it relates to pre-Holocaust European Jewry in myth & reality. Joyce's Ulysses, among many other things, was apparently a pioneering smashing of Jewish stereotypes- as well as an examination of their internalized consequences on the protagonist Leopold Bloom. Author Neil R. Davison is a respected academician with an emphasis on Irish & Jewish literary & cultural studies. This writer finds Joyce's depictions & dissections of Jewry especially admirable in light (or should we say darkness) of his having been mentored & supported in the writing of Ulysses by the beyond-the-pale Ezra Pound. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, first edition "First published 1996" as stated at copyright page, first printing though not specified thereon. From the collection of George Bornstein (1941-2021), an esteemed American author, editor & academician here at the University of Michigan- a dearly missed friend of this writer. Bornstein's authorial & scholarly specialties were the Great Irish Giants of Literature including of course Joyce, & in his life & work was also proudly Jewish & very sensitive to anti-Semitism. Bornstein has hand-written his ownership signature, date & place in pencil at upper right area of blank front endpaper: "(signed) George Bornstein/ October 1997/ Ann Arbor." There is extensive marginalia, mostly highlighting of passages & paragraphs, in pencil throughout the volume. We found & have retained, between front & rear paste-downs & endpapers, a total of seven pieces of ephemera: Copies of various articles & reviews, loose sheets folded once horizontally (one stapled), from one to several pages. The various authors discuss & review volumes relating to Joyce & Jewry (see images of first/only sheets). One of these articles (a single-page review from the Times Literary Supplement of October 11, 1996 that includes this volume) is copied twice; & all are in very fine condition. An essential, rich & rewarding Joyce-related Davison collectible in its rarest contemporary form; greatly enhanced with importantly related ephemera & with the most highly distinguished, relevant association & provenance. Book in very fine condition with just a touch of rubbing to front, back covers & spine; a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & esp. corners of same; otherwise appearing substantially mint inside & out (we regard Bornstein's pencil marginalia & ownership information as enhancements for the scholar-collector). Very Fine. [Item #9329]

Price: $85.00 save 10% $76.50