The original source of some of my Joyce/Spencer thinking:
"Finnegans Wake, Joyce's masterpiece, presents so many initial
difficulties that one has to be anxious about its survival. I
suspect that it will find company in Spenser's great poetic
romance, The Faerie Queene, and that both books will be read,
for the rest of time, by only a small band of enthusiastic
specialists. That is a sadness..."
"[Joyce] does not so much desire Shakespeare's gifts and his
scope -- Joyce believed that he was equal to Shakespeare in
those -- but is rightly jealous of Shakespeare's audience. That
jealousy makes the Wake a tragicomedy rather than the comedy
that Joyce intended. The reception of the book discouraged the
dying Joyce, yet how could it have been otherwise."
-- Harold Bloom, "The Western Canon"
When I first read Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce almost 30
years ago (when I was in my early 20s), I felt so sad for Joyce
-- it seemed that only the period when he was writing Ulysses
was truly happy. Reading about Joyce's "agon" with Shakespeare
in Harold Bloom's writings, which make it sound so much like
Joyce was overwhelmed / swallowed up by Shakespeare, truly
troubles me. As does walking into book stores and checking how
many and which Joyce books are still on the shelves, something
I've done regularly over the past 3 decades...
I did not intend to "put down" Finnegans Wake or Joyce. And I
don't believe I did that.
The topic of my original message was Spenser, with Joyce and
Dante as contrasts. But my minimal comments on Joyce were all
that interested people...
Kevin Farnham
--- "Thomas P Roche ([log in to unmask])"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I am somewhat saddened by the recent comments on Joyce's
> Finnegans Wake. It is a difficult but brilliant book--the
> last gasp of the epic tradition in the 20th century, pushing
> language as far as it can go. Listen to the old recording of
> Joyce readng it, and you are suddenly in the world of oeratic
> song. I first read it fifty years ago in a seminar given by
> Matthew Hodgart at Pemboke College Cambridge. Among the
> participants were Harold Bloom and Ted Hughes and a good many
> otheers who have not attained such fame., but it was fun and
> delight for a 22 year old beginner. . I have taught it
> several times in an eic course that began with Virgiland went
> though Ariosto, Tasso , Spenser , Milton, Blake and Joyce. It
> was a killer, but no student died from the exposure. The
> Wake is a masterpiece-- and to me a delight. I do not like it
> to be put down on this website. tpr
>
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