Years of Bloom - Hardcover

McCourt

4.12

34 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299169804 ISBN 13: 9780299169800

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000

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Since the publication of Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce in 1959, Joyce has received remarkably little biographical attention. Scholars have chipped away at various aspects of Ellmann’s impressive edifice but have failed to construct anything that might stand alongside it. The Years of Bloom is arguably the most important work of Joyce biography since Ellmann. Based on extensive scrutiny of previously unused Italian sources and informed by the author’s intimate knowledge of the culture and dialect of Trieste, The Years of Bloom documents a fertile period in Joyce’s life.
While living in Trieste, Joyce wrote most of the stories in Dubliners, turned Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and began Ulysses. Echoes and influences of Trieste are rife throughout Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Though Trieste had become a sleepy backwater by the time Ellmann visited there in the 1950s, McCourt shows that the city was a teeming imperial port, intensely cosmopolitan and polyglot, during the approximately twelve years Joyce lived there in the waning years of the Habsburg Empire. It was there that Joyce experienced the various cultures of central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. He met many Jews, who collectively provided much of the material for the character of Leopold Bloom. He encountered continental socialism, Italian Irredentism, Futurism, and various other political and artistic forces whose subtle influences McCourt traces with literary grace and scholarly rigour. The Years of Bloom, a rare landmark in the crowded terrain of Joyce studies, will instantly take its place as a standard work.

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Review:

""The Years of Bloom" is an engaging, readable, and meticulous study. . . . McCourt has added much to our sum of knowledge about Joyce." Anne Fogarty, "The Irish Times"" "Superbly researched, accessibly written, thoroughly documented, and impressively presented, "The Years of Bloom" is a major work of outstanding scholarship and a welcome, enduring, seminal contribution which will be part of every college and university reading list and reference collections on the life and writings of James Joyce." "Midwest Book Review"" "John McCourt s book is a must for all Joyce scholars, but it will interest and entertain many common readers as well. The portrait of Joyce himself is engaging." "Times Literary Supplement"" "This book changes our entire view of Joyce's Trieste. It establishes the city as a vibrant microcosm of three cultures. Joyce was born in Dublin, but as John McCourt shows, he grew up in Trieste." Colm Toibin" "John McCourt's book is a must for all Joyce scholars, but it will interest and entertain many common readers as well. The portrait of Joyce himself is engaging."--"Times Literary Supplement"

About the Author:

John McCourt was born and educated in Dublin. Since 1991 he has lived in Trieste, Italy, where he teaches at the University of Trieste and where he founded and directs the annual Trieste Joyce School. He is author of an illustrated biography of Joyce, "James Joyce: A Passionate Exile" as well as "Dubliners: A Guide to Text Analysis" and, with Renzo Crivelli, "Joyce in Svevo s Garden.""

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