A collection of papers on Joyce by a Joycean scholar.

In these essays, Elaine Mingus, James Joyce scholar and presenter at Joycean conferences, celebrates the network of connections linking Joyce with some of the great cultural and literary figures in the English language. The pieces include a fascination with the questing youth in the context of the work of Thomas Mann; a study of the striking parallels between Joyce and T.S. Eliot; and a look into how the shared literary roots of Joyce and William Blake wound up creating a virtual conversation between two giants of literature. Mingus also explores in these pages the resonances between Joyce’s trademark playfulness and the musings of Lewis Carroll, and she finds Joycean echoes, too, in Charlie Chaplin, who so well resurrected the trickster archetype that captivated the Dubliner. The studies here approach broader topics, as well, providing an in-depth exploration of Joyce’s use of mythology in an essay that reminds us how Joyce’s work always addressed the greatest themes in the human experience. Rounding out the collection, Mingus develops a thesis on Joyce’s critical reliance on gossip as a mode of language, illuminating the great author’s deep affinity for the common man and his use of words. Scholars and more casual readers alike will find Mingus to be at once insightful and sweeping in her analysis, and able to demonstrate once again why James Joyce remains a towering figure in world literature.

Elaine Mingus is one of the great epicenters of Joyce activities. Her seemingly tireless years of dedication to Joyce studies - in which she has founded as many as four extant reading groups, presented five papers at academic conferences, and organized fifteen Bloomsday celebrations - comes to lovely culmination in this collection of thoroughly researched and faithfully rendered essays. Adam Harvey