Description: The first full history of Joyce's, and his magnum opus' 'Ulysses'' reception in Ireland looks at how the author was rejected, tolerated, and finally acclaimed in academic, literary and popular circles.
Brief description: John McCourt is Professor of English Literature, Head of the Department of the Humanities at the University of Macerata, Italy and President of the International James Joyce Foundation. He is the author and editor of numerous books on Joyce and on Irish literature more in general.
Review Quotes:
"This book was crying out to be written." --The Irish Times
"Scandalously readable." --Literary Review "Consuming Joyce takes in a comprehensive array of Irish responses to Ulysses and will be an indispensable resource for future studies of Joyce's reception in the country." --Times Literary Supplement "McCourt shies away from nothing ... An important corrective against single or narrowly conceived histories." --James Joyce Broadsheet "The discussion of the cities and geographies associated with the writing of Ulysses, along with the fascinating and impressively illustrated history of the book itself, make [Consuming Joyce] a useful and absorbing document to mark this moment." --Australian Book Review "'Consuming Joyce' is a meticulous study of how Joyce's 'Ulysses' has been received in Ireland. John McCourt's writing is judicious, his research painstaking. He has managed to produce a portrait of a society in flux, its response to 'Ulysses' a mirror of its own fears and neuroses and its own gradual move towards openness and inclusion." --Colm Tóibín, Author and Mellon Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, USA. "McCourt's remarkable new opus reveals to what extent Joyce's ambivalence towards his native country has been fully reciprocated. The complex and tortuous road towards the canonization of Joyce as Ireland's most famous writer is here narrated with an impressive wealth of information." --Valerie Bénéjam, Reader, University of Nantes, France. "John McCourt's Consuming Joyce is a compelling synthesis of the vicissitudes in Joyce studies during the past 100 years. It provides a richly researched account of the reception of Ulysses by the Irish during rapid social and cultural change ... There is much Joycean minutiae to devour here and McCourt's work is a valuable contribution to the field of reception studies." --The Modernist Review