Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in this book. The book has its origin in a conference, co-ordinated by the editors, under the School of English of the University of Leeds, and held in Leeds to commemorate the centenary of James Joyce. It describes Joycean criticism, taking in the fruits of that distinctive critical style called forth by 'Finnegans Wake', and acknowledges Joyce's place with Shakespeare, Pope, the Romantics, and Beckett. Politically subversive or inalienably Irish though he may have been, Joyce remains at the heart of crucial debates in English literature, in modern literature. The greatest temptation perhaps is to see Joyce merely as supreme artificer and to fail to realise the function of his elaborate contrivings and patternings, to miss the fact that only through dedication to styles can Joyce release and perpetuate the vitality and the humanity.