Vicki Mahaffey – författare

States of Desire argues that what people desire is fundamentally connected to how they write and read. Not only do language and narrative shape desire (and vice versa), but because these processes are socially conditioned, some political circumstances, such as those present in Ireland at the turn of the century, foster experimental desire more successfully than others. Mahaffey's contribution to the critical discourse on literary modernism is to assign a political motive to the art of modernist wordplay; in doing so, she offers a more compelling and socially driven version of the oft-told tale of literary modernism. Irish writers, she argues, sought to disrupt the rigidity of political thinking and social control by turning language into a weapon; by opening up infinite new possibilities of meaning and association, linguistic play makes it impossible for thought to be monopolized by the state or any other institutional power. In this light, the text becomes a prism of political, cultural, and erotic desires: a fountain of conscious and unconscious linguistic suggestion. Defying semantic control and refuting societal repression, Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce literally fought, in their lives and in their work, for a freedom of expression which-as was painfully evidenced in the case of Wilde-was not to be had for the asking.

Mahaffey's fascinating study shows how the writings of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce are politically subversive in the most local and dangerous sense of the term: they aim to take apart the assumptions and verbal practices that make dominance possible. Each writer developed an experimental style out of the struggle with his national heritage, but each also had to come to terms with passionate ideals of his own that for a time impeded or denied the versatility of his writing.

States of Desire argues that what people desire is fundamentally connected to how they write and read. Not only do language and narrative shape desire (and vice versa), but because these processes are socially conditioned, some political circumstances, such as those present in Ireland at the turn of the century, foster experimental desire more successfully than others. Mahaffey''s contribution to the critical discourse on literary modernism is to assign a political motive to the art of modernist wordplay; in doing so, she offers a more compelling and socially driven version of the oft-told tale of literary modernism. Irish writers, she argues, sought to disrupt the rigidity of political thinking and social control by turning language into a weapon; by opening up infinite new possibilities of meaning and association, linguistic play makes it impossible for thought to be monopolized by the state or any other institutional power. In this light, the text becomes a prism of political, cultural, and erotic desires: a fountain of conscious and unconscious linguistic suggestion. Defying semantic control and refuting societal repression, Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce literally fought, in their lives and in their work, for a freedom of expression which-as was painfully evidenced in the case of Wilde-was not to be had for the asking.

This inclusive guide to Modernist literature considers the ‘high’ Modernist writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Yeats alongside women writers and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Challenges the idea that Modernism was conservative and reactionary. Relates the modernist impulse to broader cultural and historical crises and movements. Covers a wide range of authors up to the outbreak of World War II, among them Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Langston Hughes, Samuel Beckett, HD, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys. Includes coverage of women writers and gay and lesbian writers.

This inclusive guide to Modernist literature considers the ‘high’ Modernist writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Yeats alongside women writers and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Challenges the idea that Modernism was conservative and reactionary. Relates the modernist impulse to broader cultural and historical crises and movements. Covers a wide range of authors up to the outbreak of World War II, among them Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Langston Hughes, Samuel Beckett, HD, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys. Includes coverage of women writers and gay and lesbian writers.

This inclusive guide to Modernist literature considers the ‘high’ Modernist writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Yeats alongside women writers and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Challenges the idea that Modernism was conservative and reactionary. Relates the modernist impulse to broader cultural and historical crises and movements. Covers a wide range of authors up to the outbreak of World War II, among them Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Langston Hughes, Samuel Beckett, HD, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys. Includes coverage of women writers and gay and lesbian writers.

Enigmatic, vivid, and terse, James Joyce’s Dubliners continues both to puzzle and to compel its readers. This collection of essays by thirty contributors from seven countries presents a revolutionary view of Joyce’s technique and draws out its surprisingly contemporary implications by beginning with a single unusual premise: that meaning in Joyce’s fiction is a product of engaged interaction between two or more people. Meaning is not dispensed by the author; rather, it is actively negotiated between involved and curious readers through the medium of a shared text. Here, pairs of experts on Joyce’s work produce meaning beyond the text by arguing over it, challenging one another through it, and illuminating it with relevant facts about language, history, and culture. The result is not an authoritative interpretation of Joyce’s collection of stories but an animated set of dialogues about Dubliners designed to draw the reader into its lively discussions.

Enigmatic, vivid, and terse, James Joyce’s Dubliners continues both to puzzle and to compel its readers. This collection of essays by thirty contributors from seven countries presents a revolutionary view of Joyce’s technique and draws out its surprisingly contemporary implications by beginning with a single unusual premise: that meaning in Joyce’s fiction is a product of engaged interaction between two or more people. Meaning is not dispensed by the author; rather, it is actively negotiated between involved and curious readers through the medium of a shared text. Here, pairs of experts on Joyce’s work produce meaning beyond the text by arguing over it, challenging one another through it, and illuminating it with relevant facts about language, history, and culture. The result is not an authoritative interpretation of Joyce’s collection of stories but an animated set of dialogues about Dubliners designed to draw the reader into its lively discussions.

The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism presents a fresh perspective on received understandings of Irish modernism. The introduction draws connections between modernism in the arts and modernism as a resistant, liberal, relativist movement within the Catholic Church that was gathering momentum in the same period. In religion as in culture, resistance to orthodoxy has persisted, and for this reason this companion explores modernist heresies cultural, aesthetic, critical, epistemological that stretch back to the late nineteenth-century and forward to present day. Contributors widen the temporal, conceptual, generic, and geographical definitions of Irish modernism by investigating crosscurrents between literary form and cultural transformation through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book enriches the canon of Irish modernism by recovering lesser-known works by both neglected and canonical writers, especially women poets and novelists.

The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism presents a fresh perspective on received understandings of Irish modernism. The introduction draws connections between modernism in the arts and modernism as a resistant, liberal, relativist movement within the Catholic Church that was gathering momentum in the same period. In religion as in culture, resistance to orthodoxy has persisted, and for this reason this companion explores modernist heresies - cultural, aesthetic, critical, epistemological - that stretch back to the late nineteenth-century and forward to present day. Contributors widen the temporal, conceptual, generic, and geographical definitions of Irish modernism by investigating crosscurrents between literary form and cultural transformation through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book enriches the canon of Irish modernism by recovering lesser-known works by both neglected and canonical writers, especially women poets and novelists.

Winner of the American Conference on Irish Studies’ Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on LiteraturePart of James Joyce’s genius was his ability to find the poetry in everyday life. For Joyce, even a simple object like a table becomes magical, “a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment.” How might we learn to regain some of the child-like play with language and sense of delight in the ordinary that comes so naturally to Joyce?     The Joyce of Everyday Life teaches us how to interpret seemingly mundane objects and encounters with openness and active curiosity in order to attain greater self-understanding and a fuller appreciation of others. Through a close examination of Joyce's joyous, musical prose, this book shows how language provides us with the means to revitalize daily experience and social interactions across a huge, diverse, and everchanging world.  Acclaimed Joyce scholar Vicki Mahaffey demonstrates how his writing might prompt us to engage in a different kind of reading, treating words and fiction as tools for expanding the boundaries of the self with humor and feeling. A book for everyone who loves language, The Joyce of Everyday Life is a lyrical romp through quotidian existence.

Winner of the American Conference on Irish Studies’ Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on LiteraturePart of James Joyce’s genius was his ability to find the poetry in everyday life. For Joyce, even a simple object like a table becomes magical, “a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment.” How might we learn to regain some of the child-like play with language and sense of delight in the ordinary that comes so naturally to Joyce?     The Joyce of Everyday Life teaches us how to interpret seemingly mundane objects and encounters with openness and active curiosity in order to attain greater self-understanding and a fuller appreciation of others. Through a close examination of Joyce's joyous, musical prose, this book shows how language provides us with the means to revitalize daily experience and social interactions across a huge, diverse, and everchanging world.  Acclaimed Joyce scholar Vicki Mahaffey demonstrates how his writing might prompt us to engage in a different kind of reading, treating words and fiction as tools for expanding the boundaries of the self with humor and feeling. A book for everyone who loves language, The Joyce of Everyday Life is a lyrical romp through quotidian existence.

This volume proposes to honor the trenchant, influential scholarship of Professor Margot Norris in essays that amplify her illumination of Joyce’s oeuvre. The common denominator running through her work is her openness to Joyce’s various modes of innovation; she pioneered alternative ways of regarding his fiction, the readers it addresses, the narrative and generic forms it alters, the world to which it refers, and the nature of the socio-historical status quo it exposes. These categories anchor and organize the collection: Joyce’s textual plurivalence, formal innovations, possible worlds, emergent histories (including those of women), and variegated readerships.

This volume proposes to honor the trenchant, influential scholarship of Professor Margot Norris in essays that amplify her illumination of Joyce’s oeuvre. The common denominator running through her work is her openness to Joyce’s various modes of innovation; she pioneered alternative ways of regarding his fiction, the readers it addresses, the narrative and generic forms it alters, the world to which it refers, and the nature of the socio-historical status quo it exposes. These categories anchor and organize the collection: Joyce’s textual plurivalence, formal innovations, possible worlds, emergent histories (including those of women), and variegated readerships.