Before Daybreak by Ciln Owens

Before Daybreak by Ciln Owens

Joyce's ""After the Race"" is a seemingly simple tale, historically unloved by critics. Yet when magnified and dismantled, the story yields astounding political, philosophic, and moral intricacy.

In Before Daybreak, Cóilín Owens shows that ""After the Race"" is much more than a story about Dublin at the time of the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup Race: in reality, it is a microcosm of some of the issues most central to Joycean scholarship.

These issues include large-scale historical concerns--in this case, radical nationalism and the centennial of Robert Emmet's rebellion. Owens also explains the temporary and local issues reflected in Joyce's language, organization, and silences. He traces Joyce's narrative technique to classical, French, and Irish traditions. Additionally, ""After the Race"" reflects Joyce's internal conflict between emotional allegiance to Christian orthodoxy and contemporary intellectual skepticism.

If the dawning of Joyce's singular power, range, subtlety, and learning can be identified in a seemingly elementary text like ""After the Race,"" this study implicitly contends that any Dubliners story can be mined to reveal the intertextual richness, linguistic subtlety, parodic brilliance, and cultural poignancy of Joyce's art. Owens’s meticulous work will stimulate readers to explore Joyce's stories with the same scrutiny in order to comprehend and relish how Joyce writes.

Cóilín Owens is professor emeritus of English at George Mason University, USA and author of James Joyce's Painful Case.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780813060941
ISBN 10	081306094X
Title	Before Daybreak
Author	Cóilín Owens
Series	The Florida James Joyce Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University Press of Florida
Year published	2015-02-28
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.