"A major contribution to scholarship in its field. . . . A remarkable book, one that combines painstaking scholarship and a strong, original reading of the text. . . . A treasure trove of new facts, insights, and perspectives."—Patrick A. McCarthy, University of Miami
"Challenging, interesting, and enthusiastically written. . . . This could well become one of the most talked books on Ulysses."—Richard Fallis, Syracuse University
Description
This original and wide-ranging study explores the “economies” of Ulysses using a number of different critical and theoretical methods. Not only do the economic circumstances of the characters form a significant part of the novel’s realistic subject matter but the relationships between characters are also based upon modes of economic exchange. Moreover, the narrative itself is filled with economic terms that serve as tropes for its themes, events, and techniques.
Some of the subjects and topics covered include Joyce’s own “spendthrift” background, gift exchanges and reciprocity as a fundamental means of reader/author relationship in the novel, money and language, Bloom as an “economic man,” the “narrative economy” of “Wandering Rocks,” the relationship between commerce and eroticism, the function of sacrifice in the creation of value, counterfeiting, forgery, and other crimes of writing, and a demonstration of how the encounter between Stephen and Bloom “makes both ends meet.” The book brings together not only the opposed economic impulses in Joyce but also the conflicting strains of regulation and excess in the novel’s structural economy.
About the Author
Mark Osteen is an associate professor of English at Loyola College in Maryland and has published a number of articles on Joyce and twentieth-century literature.
July 1995