Table of Contents

Chapter One “An Odyssey of the Sewer”: Ulysses in Ireland 1922-1940
Chapter Two Post-Mortem: Joyce in mid-century, 1941-1961
Chapter Three The beginnings of the Joyce Industry in Ireland, 1962-1982
Chapter Four Joyce goes mainstream: 1982-2022
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

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.

About the Author

John McCourt is Professor of English Literature at the University of Macerata, Italy and Vice-President of the International James Joyce Foundation. He is the author of Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland, The Years of Bloom: Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920 which was translated into Italian, Hungarian, Spanish, and Japanese. He has edited many volumes including Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema, James Joyce in Context, and Reading Brendan Behan. He was Peter O’Brien Visiting Scholar at Concordia University in 2019.

Reviews

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.*