ABSTRACT
To many people the recent removal of the censorship ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses will seem to be the most important event in the history of contemporary Anglo-Irish literature….
Outside Ireland itself, this quintessentially Irish and local study of Dublin life has evoked somewhat extravagant enthusiasm and highly exaggerated claims for its importance. The distinguished French critic, novelist and translator, Valéry Larbaud of the Nouvelle Revue Française [No. 118] pitched the note when he declared that, with Ulysses, Ireland had made her re-entry into European literature. It is true, Mr. Joyce has made a daring and often valuable technical experiment, breaking new ground in English for the development of narrative prose, although the extension of the method, as exemplified in the published portions of Work in Progress, may well give his admirers pause. But the ‘European’ interest of the work must of necessity be limited to its form, for its content is so local and intrinsically insignificant that few who are unfamiliar with the city of Dublin thirty years ago can possibly grasp its allusions and enter into its spirit.
