Unlike many recent Joyce studies, De-familiarizing Readings eschews the theoretical and ideological and instead plants itself on firmer ground. Its seven outstanding Joyce scholars share a love of the “stuff” of texts, contexts, and intertexts: data and dates, food and clothing, letters and journals, literary allusions, and other quotidian desiderata. Their inductive approaches - whether to Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, or Finnegans Wake - are thoroughly researched, argued with meticulous, even nit-picking, precision, and offer the pleasurable reading experience of forensic analysis. And in the end they provide the satisfaction of reaching persuasive conclusions that seem both striking and inevitable.
