Chapter 7—
"The Broken Lights of Irish Myth":
Early Irish Literature in Irish Popular Culture

VLADIMIR: And yet . . . (pause) . . . how is it—this is not boring you I hope—how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there—or thereabouts—and only one speaks of a thief being saved. ¼ One out of four. Of the other three two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him. . . .

ESTRAGON: Well? They don't agree and that's all there is to it.

VLADIMIR: But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?

ESTRAGON: Who believes him?

VLADIMIR: Everybody. It's the only version they know.

ESTRAGON: People are bloody ignorant apes.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

In the last five chapters I have explored ways in which Irish mythos and Irish poetics contributed to Ulysses ; though this study has by no means been exhaustive, it is time to turn to the question of Joyce's familiarity

with Irish tradition and to the sources he might have had for elements from Irish literature that he reused in his early work and in Ulysses . I have already noted that Joyce's knowledge of early Irish literature and culture is overdetermined: the problem is not lack of plausible sources but an appropriate delimiting of the materials to be considered. School histories, Anglo-Irish literary refractions, and oral circulation of material overlapped in conveying to the Irish population at the turn of the century a sense of their literary and historical heritage; in turn these sources of information were reinforced by periodical literature, scholarly publications, and the activities of both scholarly groups and nationalist societies. As the argument for Joyce's use of Irish literature in Ulysses has unfolded in the earlier chapters, specific sources for Joyce's Irish materials have been discussed. In this chapter and the next I survey briefly all the types of sources that Joyce drew upon, less with a view to determining specific texts that he used than to suggesting the range and depth of Joyce's knowledge of early Irish literature.

Here the focus will be on the information related to early Irish literature and society available in popular Irish culture and in the writings of the Anglo-Irish literary revival. Joyce naturally would have become acquainted with most of these materials before he left Ireland permanently in 1904, though his later visits to Ireland in 1909 and 1912, his correspondence with relatives and friends, his personal contact with and visits from people resident in Ireland, and his reading of Irish periodicals maintained his contact with Irish popular culture throughout the period he was writing Ulysses. The materials surveyed in this chapter are principally refractions of Irish literature: summaries, retellings, contemporary literary versions, critical discussions, and the like. Most of these refractions were produced at the turn of the century in the highly charged political climate of Ireland, when the movement of cultural nationalism was preparing the political and military movements that resulted ultimately in Irish independence and the creation of the Irish Free State. The seemingly innocuous act of summarizing early Irish stories in a periodical was an act of cultural nationalism and thus had political and ideological over-tones, for the very existence of early Irish literature confirmed "the hypothesis that there was a civilization in Ireland long before the English could boast of one"; translations, lectures to literary societies, language study programs and other seemingly scholarly activities were similarly

politicized and charged with "nationalistic power" (W. Thompson 13).^[1] Joyce resisted the use of literature for propaganda and the prostitution of Irish culture to politics, but his familiarity with Irish popular culture at the turn of the century meant that he was nonetheless acquainted with a surprisingly large and full matrix of politically charged materials related to early Irish literature.

In this chapter I examine the early Irish materials presented in popular culture and conclude with a sampling of issues and positions regarding Irish tradition that were discussed and promulgated in the popular press at the turn of the century in Dublin, issues that are reflected in and have informed Ulysses . In the following chapter I consider Joyce's use of more scholarly studies, scholarly translations, and other monographs.

i. Early Irish History and Literature in the School Curriculum

Although Irish speakers would have known about many aspects of early Irish literature and history as their birthright, in the middle of the nineteenth century it was possible for English speakers to be educated in Ireland and yet know nothing of early Irish history and literature. Standish O'Grady has left a vivid description of his own Ascendancy education, which left him ignorant of Irish history and literature:

At school and in Trinity College I was an industrious lad and worked through curriculums with abundant energy and some success; yet in the curriculums never read one word about Irish history and legend, nor even heard one word about these things from my pastors and masters. When I was twenty-three years of age, had anyone told me—as later on a professor of Dublin University actually did—that Brian Boromh was a mythical character, I would have believed him. I knew absolutely nothing about our past, not through my own fault, for I was willing enough to learn anything set before me, but owing to the stupid educational system of the country. (Quoted in W. Thompson 20)

Often called the father of the Anglo-Irish literary revival and responsible to a large degree for the popular dissemination of Irish tales, O'Grady contributed to a change in the educational program. By the end of the

[1] Lefevere, "Literary Theory and Translated Literature," discusses the functions of refractions in literary systems.

century, when Joyce was being schooled, things were different, particularly for the Catholic population being educated in English; a number of school histories summarized features of early Irish history, literature, and culture for young readers. Such books include A Concise History of Ireland from the Earliest Times and A Child's History of Ireland , both by P. W. Joyce, as well as William Francis Collier's History of Ireland for Schools (18 84). In 1920 Collier's book was included in Joyce's library, and in 1939 Joyce owned An Illustrated History of Ireland , a successor to P. W. Joyce's Child's History. It is likely that Joyce owned these books precisely because he had used them earlier in his life.^[2]

The Collier book is an example of the sort of thing learned by school children about early Irish tales and legends in Joyce's youth. Only the first fifty-four pages of this very small book (5"×7") are devoted to the period before the Norman invasion, but in these pages are found a brief survey of The Book of Invasions , including an account of the invasion of the "Clan Milly from Spain," "descendants of Millya . . . or Milesius, King of Spain, who . . . had married Scotta . . . the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt" (Collier 10–11); an account of Phoenician sailors visiting Ireland; references to the Ulstermen; and a short history of the pre-Christian kings, including Conaire Mor. There are notes on the pre-Christian culture of Ireland, including material on the mounds and tombs of Ireland and a brief account of the druids. A short chapter covers the early saints of Ireland, and there is an account of early Irish social life giving among other things a brief introduction to features of the Brehon laws. A chapter devoted to the Viking period refers to Turgesius, Brian Boru, and the Battle of Clontarf. Both the ubiquity of Collier's history and the nature of his treatment of early Irish tradition are indicated by a comment included in a discussion of Irish mythology in the 26 August 1899 issue of the United Irishman : "Those who have been unfortunate enough to have had Col-

[2] Kelleher, "Identifying the Irish Printed Sources" 164, suggests that P. W. Joyce's A Child's History of Ireland was "inescapable" in James Joyce's youth. P. W. Joyce was the author of a number of short histories of Ireland, all covering essentially the same materials and sharing the same language, of which the Concise History and the Child's History are two examples; the text of A Child's History was the basis of An Illustrated History of Ireland . The first edition of A Concise History, which appeared in 1893, took the history to 1837, but the text was gradually updated so that the twenty-fourth edition, published in 1920, takes Irish history to 1908.

lier's 'History of Ireland' shoved down their throats at school, may possibly recollect the first chapter, where mythology and matter-of-fact are mixed up in a delightful fashion."

Although it cannot be supposed that an introduction like Collier's supplied Joyce with all the information necessary for the Irish substructure of his major works, the material in the book suggests that Joyce was introduced early to the Irish subtexts he manipulates in his mature literary production. The simplified presentation of the Irish stories and historical materials in school texts is also consistent with the gestalt of Irish materials in Ulysses . Joyce's ability to use Irish tradition in the architectonic mode rests on his familiarity with the tradition from boyhood onward.

ii. The Circus Animals All on Show: Early Irish Literature and the Anglo-Irish Literary Revival

It may seem anomalous to survey the works of the Anglo-Irish literary revival as part of Joyce's background in Irish popular culture since in our literary curriculum and from our historical vantage the movement is generally considered part of high culture and its works are canonical. But in Joyce's youth canonized "modern literature" stopped with the Romantics, and the Anglo-Irish literary revival was in its infancy. Moreover, the particular affiliations of the Anglo-Irish writers during the early years of the century suggest that at this period their work was embedded in the matrix of popular culture. In fact in 1901 in "The Day of the Rabblement" Joyce had taken the members of the literary revival to task precisely for their involvement in politics and their currying of popular favor; Joyce's assessment of the politicization and popularization of the literary movement was confirmed by what he considered the "political and dramatic claptrap" (MBK 187) in Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan , a play first staged in the spring of 1901 by Maud Gonne's nationalist group, Inghinidhe na hÉireann 'the daughters of Ireland'. Only gradually did the literary revival distinguish itself from the broader Irish cultural revival and the movement of cultural nationalism, a distinction that began notably with the 1903 break of the Art for Art's Sake group from the Art for Propaganda crowd over J. M. Synge's Shadow of the Glen (cf. MacBride 332)

and was probably not decisive before the riots over The Playboy of the Western World in 1907.^[3]

Moreover, as a source of knowledge for early Irish literature per se, the literary works of the Anglo-Irish writers can only be counted as popular since they represent imaginative refractions of the texts rather than scholarly translations or other sorts of presentations oriented to the source texts themselves. A writer coming to his craft in the period Joyce did would have been exposed by the writings of his older contemporaries to the rudiments of fairy belief, to refractions of early Irish classics such as the Deirdre story and Táin Bó Cúailnge , to much of the CuChulainn and Finn cycles, to stories about the chief gods of the Tuatha De Danann, to a conception of the Irish otherworld, to tales about the kings of Ireland, and more. Though few Joyce scholars would dispute Joyce's familiarity with Yeats's work, they might be less willing to acknowledge that in virtue of that familiarity, Joyce had a substantial introduction to the main lines of Irish literary tradition.

A full survey of Yeats's use of Irish materials is hardly appropriate in this context, but it is clear that Yeats's work is densely textured with references to Irish literary themes.^[4] Yeats uses Irish mythos in a comprehensive and detailed fashion; to understand his work fully, a knowledge of Irish tradition is necessary, and, conversely, his work would have inculcated an appreciation of Irish tradition in a reader such as Joyce. Among Yeats's early works that Joyce would have known there are references to and refractions of Ulster Cycle tales including The Death of Aife's Only Son (in On Baile's Strand), The Feast of Bricriu (in The Green Helmet), The Wooing of Emer (in The Only Jealousy of Emer ), and The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu (in Deirdre ), as well as various references to the stories of Fergus and Conchobor. Yeats offers as well treatments of the Finn

[3] For a more detailed treatment of the popular culture matrix from which the Anglo-Irish literary revival emerged, see Tymoczko, "Amateur Political Theatricals."

The independence of the literary movement was still later fostered by Annie Horniman's gift of a theater to W. B. Yeats, in which she stipulated that no six-penny seats be made available in the house, thus severing the dramatic movement from its dependence on a genuinely popular audience and making the movement much more an avant-garde affair. Frazier (171–72ff.) and Hunt (59–70) contain information about the seating restrictions, but the issue is also discussed widely in the United Irishman in 1904 and thereafter. The restrictions were later lifted.

[4] See, for example, Richard Finneran's explanatory notes to his edition of 'Yeats's poems.

Cycle, including a retelling of Laoidh Oisín ar Thír na nÓg (Oisin in the Land of Youth ) by Micheál Coimin (Michael Comyn) in The Wanderings of Oisin and the story of Diarmait and Grainne in the play entitled Diarmuid and Grania , which he wrote with George Moore for the 1901 season of the Irish Literary Theatre.^[5] Fairy lore, including various conceptions of the Irish otherworld, is widespread in Yeats's work (see, for example, The Celtic Twilight, Fairy and Folk Tales, The Wanderings of Oisin , and The Land of Heart's Desire ). Joyce knew this material since in 1903 he called The Celtic Twilight Yeats's "happiest book" (CW 104). Yeats's work is also full of traditional Irish imagery, such as that of the rose and the poor old woman.

We can also document Joyce's knowledge of other works of the Anglo-Irish literary revival. Augusta Gregory's retellings of the Ulster Cycle in Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and her treatment of the Mythological Cycle and the Finn Cycle in Gods and Fighting Men (1904) give a comprehensive overview of the early literature in Ireland, albeit a view that is manipulated in various ways by her literary agenda to make the materials palatable to a popular audience. Although Joyce had scant respect for some of Lady Gregory's work, as his uncomplimentary review of her Poets and Dreamers for the Daily Express indicates (CW 102–5; cf. JJ 2 121), his use of her refractions of the early tales should not be ruled out. Joyce had probably read Cuchulain of Muirthemne , for he has Buck Mulligan, in reproaching Stephen Dedalus for his treatment of Augusta Gregory, paraphrase a line of Yeats's preface to the book in the library scene of Ulysses :

O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch?

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:
—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer. (9. 1159–65)^[6]

Gregory often bowdlerizes the early texts, leaving out, for example, the sinless sexuality of the otherworld in her version of The Voyage of Bran (Gods and Fighting Men 103–6), and she does so unapologetically, stat-

[5] AIT (439–56) includes a translation of Coimín's poem.

[6] Cf. Yeats's opening sentences to his preface: "I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time. Perhaps I should say that it is the best book that has ever come out of Ireland" (Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne 11). Mulligan's admonition of Dedalus with the quote of Yeats's praise may have been intended as a sort of reparation to Gregory.

ing in her dedication to the first volume, "I left out a good deal I thought you would not care about for one reason or another" (Cuchulain of Muirthemne 5). Nonetheless, Gregory's treatments of the early literature are not only comprehensive but at times surprisingly detailed. For many stories, including The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel , all the elements of the tale are given in such detail that a reading of Gregory's adaptations would have sufficed for the schematic use Joyce makes of Irish mythos in Ulysses and his early works. Occasionally she even includes the sort of telling detail that Joyce seems to have made use of, though because of the overdetermined nature of Joyce's sources the detail cannot be traced specifically to Gregory's version. For example, though the sexual content of the early tales is diminished throughout the two volumes, Gregory retains the exchange between Ailill and Medb that may inform the relations between Leopold and Molly Bloom:

"For it is not a common marriage portion would have satisfied me, the same as is asked by the other women of Ireland," [Maeve] said; "but it is what I asked as a marriage portion, a man without stinginess, without jealousy, without fear. For it would not be fitting for me to be with a man that would be close-handed, for my own hand is open in wage-paying and in free-giving; and it would be a reproach on my husband, I to be a better wage-payer than himself. And it would not be fitting for me to be with a man that would be cowardly, for I myself go into struggles and fights and battles and gain the victory; and it would be a reproach to my husband, his wife to be braver than himself. And it would not be fitting for me to be with a husband that would be jealous, for I was never without one man being with me in the shadow of another." (Cuchulain of Muirthemne 141–42)

The early productions of the Irish dramatic movement that Joyce followed closely would also have contributed to his familiarity with early Irish history and literature. In the years before 1904, for example, the Irish Literary Theatre and its successor staged versions of Finn tales including Alice Milligan's Last Feast of the Fianna in February 1900 and Yeats's collaboration with George Moore, Diarmuid and Grania , in October 1901. In April 1902 A. E.'s Deirdre played with Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan , and in October 1903 The King's Threshold by Yeats was staged. Meanwhile Inghinidhe na hÉireann was producing tableaux vivants dramatizing the early history and literature of Ireland,^[7] and the Fays'

[7] See the review in the United Irishman 13 Apr. 1901.

acting company was staging still other historical plays, including Alice Milligan's Red Hugh .^[8] In part the early dramatic movement was intended to have an educative function and to expose the audiences to an Irish patriotic history and literature; as a follower of this movement, Joyce, like the rest of the audience, would have learned elements of Irish tradition.

Other authors of the Anglo-Irish literary revival also cannot be ruled out as sources of Joyce's familiarity with early Irish literature. It is hardly conceivable that Joyce could have spent his boyhood in Ireland without having read some of Standish O'Grady; strange as those presentations are of the Ulster Cycle and other tales, they do familiarize the readers with the major plot lines and major characters.^[9] A. E. likewise may have contributed to Joyce's knowledge of the early literature, though possibly in his case more through conversation than through his writings. Joyce certainly knew A. E.'s Deirdre since he had seen one of its initial performances when it was staged with Cathleen ni Houlihan, and a line from the play is quoted in Ulysses (9. 190–91).

iii. The United Irishman

Periodicals at the turn of the century were a major vehicle for the popular dissemination of Irish culture. In the period 1895–1905 a number of journals provided Irish readers with information about early Irish literature and, in addition, furnished material that was discussed and circulated orally. Besides such scholarly journals as Revue celtique and Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie , there were more popular cultural and artistic periodicals such as Samhain (the review Yeats wrote for the Irish dramatic movement), broad-gauge political periodicals such as the United Irishman, periodicals of specific political groups such as the Irish Homestead (the organ of the Irish Agricultural Association Society), periodicals devoted to cultural nationalism such as Standish O'Grady's All Ireland Review , and Gaelic periodicals including Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge . Because journals often reviewed the new numbers of other periodicals, much of the material published in this form passed into general knowledge, at least in a distilled form; the readers of one journal were thus likely to

[8] For a chronology of the early performances, see Ellis-Fermor, appendix 1.

[9] Marcus (86) traces Joyce's description of the Citizen to O'Grady's Finn and His Companions .

know the major issues covered in many. These periodicals were an important source of knowledge about traditional Irish life, including popular manifestations such as music or folk calendar customs as well as patriotic history and early Irish literature.

In the face of the variety of potential sources for Joyce's knowledge of Irish literature and culture, the overdetermination of sources, and the difficulty of documenting Joyce's knowledge of Irish material, it is welcome to be able to identify the United Irishman as a significant and documentable source that offers a preliminary index of the range and depth of Joyce's knowledge of early Irish literature and history obtained from popular sources.^[10] It is well known that Joyce read the United Irishman every week, having it sent to him on the Continent after he left Ireland (Letters 2. 149–50). Joyce considered it the best newspaper in Ireland, as Stanislaus Joyce reports in My Brother's Keeper :

He said that the United Irishman was the only paper in Dublin worth reading, and in fact, he used to read it every week. . . . In spite of its perfervid nationalism, the paper had found very little favour with the students of University College or with their masters. Its tone was too independent, its line too unusual; it was suspected of lukewarm Catholicism, of disrespect for priests (Griffith had been a Parnellite); and it did not seem to be hostile to intellectual movements in Ireland and on the continent. Yeats and AE, and others who contributed to it gratuitously, were of Protestant stock and on the Catholic blacklist. (173–74)

Joyce himself, in a letter to Stanislaus dated 6 September 1906, characteristically put the matter in somewhat more restrained terms: "In my opinion [the United Irishman ] is the only newspaper of any pretensions in Ireland. I believe that its policy would benefit Ireland very much. Of course so far as any intellectual interest is concerned it is hopelessly deaf. But even that deafness is preferable to the alertness of Dialogues of the Day" [Letters 2: 157–58).^[11]

The United Irishman would have attracted Joyce's attention and allegiance for many reasons. The journal gave extensive coverage to artistic questions; meetings of literary societies were reported; publications, per-

[10] A more detailed version of this subject is found in Tymoczko, "'Broken Lights of Irish Myth.'"

[11] Dialogues of the Day was a weekly commentary put out by Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Joyce's old school friend.

formances, and exhibits were reviewed; poems and stories were published in virtually every issue.^[12] A great part of the debate about the role of the theater in Ireland and the role of literature in building a nationalist consciousness was carried out in the pages of the United Irishman ; both Frank Fay and W. B. Yeats contributed to the periodical frequently. The appeal of the United Irishman to Joyce was no doubt enhanced by the fact that it had taken notice of his "Day of the Rabblement" on 2 November 1901.^[13]

The journal was edited by Arthur Griffith and was a vehicle for Griffith's early views, which emerged in 1905 as the policies of Sinn Féin; at the time the United Irishman was being published, those policies were mildly socialist and separatist yet constitutional (Henry 57–78). The newspaper was neither Republican nor militaristic, though Griffith included some articles that tended to those views, seeing the United Irishman as a forum for bringing together in one nationalistic movement the varied patriotic and political factions (United Irishman 4 Mar. 1899; Younger 15ff.; Henry 61–63). The journal respected the memory of Joyce's hero Parnell. Moreover, though the United Irishman supported the Irish language movement, it did not reject the use of English for a nationalist literary movement, particularly early in its publication history. Stanislaus Joyce summarizes his brother's early political views as follows:

My brother did not belong to the Sinn Fein movement, though he afterwards wrote about it in Trieste, but he favoured it rather than the "ineffectual parliamentary struggle" in which I believed. His political leanings were towards socialism, and he had frequented meetings of socialist groups in back rooms in the manner ascribed to Mr. Duffy in "A Painful Case." . . . My brother thought that fanned nationalisms, which he loathed, were to blame for wars and world troubles. Mr. Duffy's disillusionment with socialism, however, does not reflect my brother's ideas but mine. At Trieste he still called

[12] Generally the poetry is doggerel, in part because the editors of the United Irishman took the view that literature should be subordinated to political purposes, but occasionally there are pieces of literary merit. Much of the poetry in the early years of the United Irishman was by William Rooney; Joyce's views on this poetry can be seen in his scathing review of Rooney's collected poetry, published in 1902 as "An Irish Poet" (CW 84–87).

[13] Stanislaus Joyce notes that "[my brother] and I distributed it to the newspapers and people in Dublin that my brother wished to see it" (MBK 152). The fact that Joyce would have taken his broadside to the United Irishman is another indication that Joyce valued the journal.

himself a socialist. This political attitude of his I considered inconsequent in an artist. . . . Nor did I follow him in his approval of Sinn Fein. (MBK 174)^[14]

The United Irishman had a relatively short life span, appearing weekly from 4 March 1899 to 24 June 1899 in a four-page format, and from 1 July 1899 to 14 April 1906 in an eight-page format. It was succeeded by Sinn Féin , which was published from May 1906 until December 1914, when it and other publications were suppressed under the security regulations of wartime.^[15] Despite the short period of publication, the United Irishman had a significant impact on Joyce in part because it came at a formative period of his life and in part because it was one of his lifelines to Ireland after he emigrated. As Dominic Manganiello has shown (see esp. 123ff., 140ff., 171ff.), the United Irishman and its successor Sinn Féin were influential on Joyce's political thought, and articles in these papers are reflected in Joyce's literary work, including Ulysses ; the United Irishman is thus likely to have affected Joyce's work in broader ways as well.

The journal had an overt educative function as an element of its program. In addition to many series of political articles intended to radicalize its readers, the United Irishman carried regular features meant to inculcate in its readers an Irish patriotic history, to expose them to pre-Christian Irish myth, and to acquaint them with some principal texts of early Irish literature; the journal also attempted to familiarize its readers with contemporary nationalist Anglo-Irish literature through its reviews and notices. The educative purpose waxed and waned during the periodical's years of publication, with the varying amount of space dedicated to cultural materials determined in part by current events. During periods of intense political activity current events dominated the newspaper and provided enough grist for the nationalist mill; during quieter political periods there was more cultural material in the periodical. Through the greater part of the journal's lifetime, page two was dedicated to back-

[14] For a comprehensive discussion of Joyce's political views, see Manganiello; Manganiello's characterization of the political position of the United Irishman is found on 26–30.

[15] Sinn Féin appeared weekly except for a brief period (24 Aug. 1909–22 Jan. 1910) during which it was a daily (Younger 35–37, 49; Henry 89–90). At times Joyce referred to Sinn Féin as "the U. I." in 1906 after the United Irishman ceased publishing; see Letters 2: 149–50, 157–58, 164, 195.

ground articles on a variety of Irish cultural topics, often organized as extensive series about a particular subject. As a long-term reader of the United Irishman , Joyce was thus presented with a great deal of material related to early Irish history, literature, poetics, and art.

Three of the series represent significant funds of information about early Irish literature, and they are complementary in their coverage. Richard Irvine Best's translation of The Irish Mythological Cycle by Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville appeared in weekly installments between 9 November 1901 and 19 July 1902. Best is memorialized for us in the library episode of Ulysses , where he is represented, significantly, as showing d'Arbois de Jubainville's book to Haines (9.93).^[16] This series would have furnished Joyce with summaries and analyses of the major texts of the Mythological Cycle: a detailed consideration of The Book of Invasions ; more summary treatment of The Second Battle of Mag Tuired , the legends of Tuan mac Cairill and Fintan, The Taking of the Sid, The Dream of Oengus , and The Wooing of Etain ; and stories of Mongan, Crimthann Nia Nair, and other heroes. Moreover, d'Arbois de Jubainville discusses some basic elements of Irish myth, presenting the repertory of the principal deities and canvassing such features as the configuration of the otherworld and Celtic attitudes toward the realm of the dead. The value of this material lies primarily in the systematic coverage of the mythic and religious substratum of early Irish literature, and aspects of Joyce's use of this series have been discussed above.

Shortly after The Irish Mythological Cycle was complete, R. I. Best wrote a series entitled "The Old Irish Bardic Tales," which ran weekly from 11 October 1902 to 25 April 1903. In this series Best gave detailed summaries of and provided bibliographical information about a number of central early Irish stories. This series is doubly important because it indicates not only that Joyce had been exposed to the main lines of a great deal of early Irish literature, the heroic literature in particular, but also that he had specific bibliographical guidance for further work on these tales coming from the competent hand of the man who was to become the standard bibliographer of early Irish literature (see Best, Bibliography

[16] By 1904 Best's translation had been published in monograph form; Joyce met Best when he returned to Ireland in 1902 for his Christmas visit (JJ 2 118). Schutte (36–39) gives a good summary of Best's career as well as Joyce's treatment of him as a character in Ulysses .

of Irish Philology and of Printed Irish Literature [1913] and Bibliography of Irish Philology and Manuscript Literature [1942]).^[17]

The series begins with synopses of and bibliographical background for four imrama, 'voyage tales': The Voyage of Mael Duin, The Voyage of Snegdus and MacRiagla, The Voyage of Bran , and The Voyage of the Ui Corra . These tales provide a touchstone for Joyce's presentation of Gibraltar as the Irish happy otherworld and the otherworld motifs in "Circe," as well as Joyce's use of the imram framework throughout (cf. Sultan 42–48). The series continues with summaries and bibliographical information about a number of Ulster Cycle tales: The Adventures of Nera, The Death of Fergus mac Leiti, The Destruction of Dind Rig, The Story of Mac Datho's Pig, The Feast of Bricriu, The Sickbed of CuChulainn, The Exile of the Sons of Doel Dermait, The Destruction of Da Choca's Hostel, The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, The Cattle Raid of Fraech, The Deaths of Garb and Goll, The Intoxication of the Ulstermen, The Story of the Two Swineherds, The Wooing of Emer, The Battle of Ros na Rig, The Death of CuChulainn , and The Death of Conchobor . There are also articles on The Second Battle of Mag Tuired, The Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise, and The Adventures of Tadg mac Cein. The presence of this series in the United Irishman indicates that Joyce had been introduced to a substantial part of the early Irish narrative repertory in rather scholarly summaries.^[18] Best's articles in the United Irishman provide an adequate base for the pervasive but relatively schematic use Joyce makes of these early Irish heroic tales.^[19]

The third series that is significant for our assessment of Joyce's knowledge of early Irish material is "A Ballad History of Ireland"; it began in the first issue of 1904 and continued until 2 December 1905. The earlier numbers of the series deal with Irish pseudohistory and early medieval

[17] The bibliographical components of these essays by Best could provide directions for further research on particular early Irish literary texts known to Joyce. For other bibliographical information provided by the United Irishman, see Tymoczko, "'Broken Lights of Irish Myth'" 769–70.

[18] Some bowdlerization occurs, but the summaries are representative of the texts in most respects.

[19] It is of particular interest to find The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel included in Best's series, for John Kelleher ("Irish History") has argued that Da Derga's Hostel informs "The Dead." Best's summary of Da Derga's Hostel appeared in the United Irishman 24–31 Jan. 1903. It is a very full summary, at times a paraphrase of the original text, and it omits none of the episodes; thus, it provides an ample base for the parallels Kelleher has proposed.

history. In these columns Joyce again found summaries of The Book of Invasions and The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel as well as accounts of texts of the Ulster Cycle, including the story of Conchobor's success in replacing Fergus as king of Ulster, Táin Bó Cúailnge, and The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu . There are also accounts of various traditional kings, including Conn Cetcathach and Brian Boru; accounts of Finn and the Fenians, the early Christian saints, and the Vikings; summaries of battles such as Mag Rath and Clontarf; and material on the Norman conquest of Ireland. Much of this material has parallels in Joyce's speeches and essays and is found as well in Finnegans Wake , particularly the material on Clontarf and the Norman conquest. The series is important for the raw material it provided Joyce, but it is also significant because the historical essays are accompanied by poetry and ballads on the same subjects. Though in some cases the poetic material takes the form of translations of early Irish poetry related to the historical subject, in most cases the poetry is part of Anglo-Irish literature or the Anglo-Irish ballad tradition. Thus, Joyce found in the United Irishman a comprehensive survey of the poetic uses to which his Anglo-Irish literary predecessors had put early Irish history and literature.

These three series are not the only sources of information about early Irish literature in the United Irishman. Specific stories are alluded to in isolated articles throughout the run of the journal. There are summaries of or references to the story of Lug and Tailltiu, the story of Donn Bo, the story of Aine, the story of the Children of Lir, the tale of Cliodna, the story of Baile and Ailinn, The Dream of Oengus , CuChulainn at the ford, and the Deirdre tale.^[20] Other stories are discussed or mentioned in passing in the course of articles, reviews, poems, and so forth. Even this partial listing of tales indicates that Joyce had been introduced to some of the minor or arcane stories of early Irish literature. Thus, even if Joyce's sources for Irish literature were restricted to popular materials, one could not use the major stories found in Gregory's translations and adaptations, for example, as an index of his knowledge.

The United Irishman also reported on speeches about Irish literature and culture, often quoting them in extenso, thus providing readers like Joyce with knowledge of the contemporary discourse about Irish culture.

[20] For specific dates here and below, see Tymoczko, "'Broken Lights of Irish Myth.'"

In this way Joyce would have been aware of a number of lectures about Modern Irish literature. There are also transcripts of lectures about early Irish topics, such as the lecture on Brigit, the goddess and saint, carried on 3 November 1900; Maud Gonne's lecture on Medb on 5 October 1901;^[21] and a lecture on the seventeenth-century Irish historian Geoffrey Keating on 9 November 1901. The United Irishman also provided general knowledge about Irish culture. The saints of Ireland are discussed in several articles in the journal, and Mangan is the topic of other articles. These articles contributed background for Joyce's Trieste lectures. The Celtic festivals, including Samain and Beltaine, are discussed or alluded to in significant ways. Irish music was a perennial topic of interest and formed the subject of two series in the United Irishman. Finally, there is abundant information about Irish folk life, folk belief, and folklore, including Irish folktales in translation.

Joyce would also have become acquainted with some Irish literary forms, genres, and typologies, which were discussed or instantiated in the United Irishman. There are, for example, extensive discussions of placelore, the most significant of which is the series "The Woods of Ireland," which ran for sixty-eight times listing the locations and names of vanished Irish woods (29 Oct. 1904–14 Apr. 1906). This was one of the less scintillating series published in Griffith's journal, but it served to make the political point that Ireland had been deforested under English rule.^[22] Other discussions of placelore and dindsenchas^[*] enchas occur in various issues. Anglo-Irish versions of the Irish genre of the aisling are found several times. There is a discussion of Irish cáoine , 'keening', and Irish poetics, Irish rhyme, and related topics are mentioned frequently.

Not the least of the contributions of the United Irishman to the nationalist literary repertory is the mythopoeic imagery perpetuated in its pages. The image of the rose, in particular the little dark rose, is found frequently. We find also the image of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the Shan Van Vocht, and the poor old wandering woman, as well as the image of Ireland as mother or queen. There are poems about fairy raths, Tír na nÓg,

[21] In this lecture Gonne notes that Medb always had one man in the shadow of another.

[22] There is an elaborate parody of this discourse in "Cyclops," 12.1239–95, which not only takes up deforestation and reforestation but also parodies more broadly the nationalist rhetoric about English imperialism and exploitation.

Hy Breasail, and magic hazels. Such imagery is the stock in trade of Irish cultural nationalism; when we find these elements in Joyce's works, we must be aware that he knew the resonances he was evoking. No reader of the United Irishman could be innocent of them.

Even a brief inventory such as I have given here of the coverage in the United Irishman of early Irish literature and literary form, early Irish history, and early Irish culture reveals an immense wealth of resources for a regular, albeit critical reader of the journal like James Joyce. Most of Joyce's use of Irish plots, motifs, myths, and genres identified in previous chapters have sources in articles Joyce found in the United Irishman, even in the absence of his familiarity with other texts, readings, or oral exposure.

iv. The Popular Press and Joyce's Knowledge of Early Irish Literature

Material about early Irish and Modern Irish literature, Irish history, and the Irish language, as well as coverage of the Anglo-Irish literary revival, is widespread in most periodical literature published in Ireland at the turn of the century, and the general pattern that emerges regarding Joyce's knowledge of Irish literature and history from the detailed analysis of articles in the United Irishman is confirmed by a survey of Irish periodicals as a whole. Irish cultural topics were discussed in most periodicals—the daily newspapers, the general weeklies, and the weeklies on special topics. A study of such periodicals demonstrates that the cultural ambience of the period provided both a working knowledge of the main narratives of early Irish literature and a skeletal patriotic history, illustrating that at the time one did not need to resort to scholarly journals or publications in the Irish language for such knowledge. Thus, the broad lines of the argument sketched above regarding the United Irishman are substantiated by a wider study of the periodical literature in Ireland in Joyce's youth. Of all the popular periodicals current, however, the coverage of Irish history and literature is most systematic and most extensive in the United Irishman, a point with implications for an assessment of how Joyce was positioned with respect to Irish citizens in general regarding knowledge about early Irish literature.

In the following discussion of Irish periodical literature I consider three

categories of periodicals: daily papers and their weekly counterparts, general reviews, and publications with a narrow topical focus.^[23] The format of daily newspapers at the turn of the century sets bounds on their treatment of Irish culture. Because the dailies were small (between four and eight pages) yet charged with providing all the news in an era when there were no other media such as radio and television to carry the burden, type is small and dense, and articles are typically short. There are few feature articles or surveys of general cultural and political topics. Such studies are reserved instead for the weeklies. Moreover, the treatment of Irish culture in the dailies is determined by political orientation; the Irish periodicals of this period held marked political positions that determined what they deemed newsworthy. The strong ideological bias of Irish journalism at the time, as with most European papers still today, means that events that are major news in one daily may receive scant if any coverage in another.

As a result there is very little news about Irish literature, history, language, or culture in the Ascendancy and Unionist dailies, for the coverage of these topics had political implications, as already mentioned. The Unionist papers differ among themselves in focus and in the breadth of their general coverage. The Irish Times of the period, for example, is oriented to sports, finance, and London news, while the Dublin Evening Mail has less sporting news and more general features, including a daily story, theater news, and sensational news. The Daily Express —for which

[23] I surveyed major Irish periodicals for the period 1900–1904, with a particular systematic focus on the reporting of Irish cultural news in the period between January and May 1902, using the treatment of two major Irish cultural events as an index: the events of the week 16–22 March, which was designated Irish Language Week by the leaders of the language movement and which included a large parade in Dublin on Sunday, 16 March; and the staging of Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan and A. E.'s Deirdre in April 1902 by the combined forces of the dramatic movement including the Fays' acting company, Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and two of the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre (Yeats and Augusta Gregory), a production that inaugurated the Irish National Theatre Society. Where this preliminary sampling indicated substantial coverage of Irish cultural material, I surveyed the periodical in question at greater length; in the case of some short-lived journals, I covered the entire run. I chose spring 1902 as the focus of research in part because the two important cultural events could be used as an index of comparison but also because Joyce was in Dublin and actively involved in Irish culture during this period. Thus, it was a time of his life in which Irish periodical literature would have affected him.

For a general survey of the press in Ireland, see Brown. Rose and O'Hanlon (xxii–xxiv) discuss Joyce's use of specific dailies in the construction of Ulysses .

Joyce wrote in 1902 and 1903 (JJ 2 108, 112, 138–39; cf. CW 84–140) and for which Gabriel Conroy writes in "The Dead" and is still writing in 1904 when the action of Ulysses takes place (7.307), despite all of Miss Ivors's criticism and his own resolution to journey "westward"—carries reports about all manner of Ascendancy societies as well as detailed news about the Protestant churches. Despite their shades of difference, these papers are united in the treatment of the Irish language movement and the Irish literary movement; on the whole where this movement is not consigned to silence, it is reported with contempt.^[24] Thus, for example, in the Evening Mail the 16 March 1902 demonstration of the Irish language movement is passed off with a scant, hostile paragraph:

That the Irish language movement is growing in strength and stature we are not concerned to deny. We can see, indeed, that under certain circumstances it might be made a movement with which every Irishman could sympathise. But unfortunately, under present conditions, we fear the Irish language campaign is only another side of the eternal political agitation with which this land is cursed. We are afraid it is impossible to deny that its yearning for the de-Anglicization of Ireland is not confined to the literary side of life, but that the political hostility to England which is the pulse of Nationalism is also the pulse of the language movement. It is Nationalist, not national, and we are inclined to regret the fact. If we could believe that yesterday's procession was not, after all, a political demonstration and that "God Save Ireland" was a pious aspiration rather than a fierce battle-shout, we would be heartily glad; but it would be unwise, we think, to accept the demonstration in this light. (17 Mar. 1902)

The Irish Times was most infamous among contemporaries for its treatment of Irish cultural subjects: not only did it suppress Irish topics in general, but when it spoke, it was hostile. In spring 1902, for example, the Times carried a series of letters criticizing the Irish language movement and the movement to teach Irish in the National Schools. This hostility was relieved only by letters from authors such as Douglas Hyde and T. W. Rolleston defending the language movement; even these rejoinders were carefully controlled, and the Times refused on at least one occasion to publish a letter by Hyde on the subject, a refusal that itself made news

[24] In this regard it is telling that in Ulysses George Russell will be able to arrange a puff in the Express for his projected volume of work by younger poets (9.302).

in the nationalist dailies of the period.^[25] The Times thus provided readers with no information about Irish literature and history per se and was even marginal in its coverage of such cultural events as Irish Language Week in March 1902 and the monster demonstration in Dublin on 16 March. Only half of a column was devoted to the topic in the Monday issue following the parade.

The nationalist dailies, by contrast, all treat the Irish language movement and the Irish literary revival as part of the ongoing news, yet they often do it in such ways that the movement is contained or even patronized. In Home Rule and Republican dailies and weeklies of the period, the coverage of Irish literary and linguistic questions is fairly broad but very shallow. The Freeman's Journal and the Weekly Freeman , of interest to Joyce scholars because Leopold Bloom is employed by the Freeman, are both Home Rule in their orientation and are typical of the daily newspapers and popular weeklies that were sympathetic to the language movement for political reasons. The Freeman's Journal, a large-format, eight-page daily varying in width between seven and nine columns, notes most of the significant aspects of the revival. The Gaelic League and other revival groups are covered systematically, if briefly, and the Gaelic Athletic Association finds a place in the paper's news as well, though in a less systematic fashion. Lectures on Irish literary and historical topics are reported, often in some detail. There are reviews of Irish plays and of plays produced by Anglo-Irish dramatic organizations, including the 1902 performances of the A. E.'s Deirdre and Yeats's Cathleen ni Houlihan . Such reviews can be quite enthusiastic. The events of Irish Language Week are covered well, including a full report of the extensive parade and rally of 16 March 1902. There is also a daily article entitled "Le h-aghaidh na nGaedhilgeoiridhe," 'For the Irish Enthusiasts', a feature that published a variety of types of texts in Irish, from wondertales to opinion columns, thus meeting one of the Irish language movement's goals to have some Irish published in every issue of a periodical; in the Freeman the Irish text is occasionally accompanied by an English translation.

Much the same pattern is found in the Weekly Freeman , a large-format, sixteen-page, seven-column weekly in two sections. As regular

[25] See, for example, the Irish Daily Independent of 12 February 1902, p. 2, col. 7. Hyde's letter was ultimately published in the February 1902 issue of An Claidheamh Soluis.

weekly features the Weekly Freeman has material about the Gaelic League and an article in Irish. There are serialized features as well. Thus, for example, throughout most of 1902 the Weekly Freeman printed installments of Douglas Hyde's edition of Raftery's poems, accompanied by an English translation of the material; this series was followed in 1903, the centenary of Emmet's execution, by a serialized biography of Robert Emmet. In addition there is topical news about the Irish revival as well as the occasional background article about issues pertaining to Irish history, literature, biography, and culture. We find, for example, a three-column article on the schools of ancient Ireland in the 1903 Saint Patrick's Day issue of the Weekly Freeman.

Nonetheless, in both the daily and weekly Freeman the reporting of Irish cultural materials is dwarfed by the presentation of the general news of the country and the world: Irish history and literature stand side by side with notices of suicides, murders, accidents; economic and trade information command more space; international news, such as coverage of the Boer War, takes precedence; political reporting of Parliament is emphasized; and greater attention is paid to such local news as Queen Victoria's daily activities during her 1900 visit to Ireland. Moreover, in the Weekly Freeman most Irish features are carried in the second section of the paper—the culture section containing articles aimed at women and children as well as the general readership. They are thus marked clearly as secondary in importance to the major political and commercial news in section one. The placement of these Irish literary and cultural materials defines them as out of the scope of politics; it is, of course, ironic to a modern reader to find this arrangement, knowing as we do that Irish cultural nationalism was the cornerstone of future Irish politics and that Standish O'Grady's 1899 prophecy was to come true: "We have now a literary movement, it is not very important; it will be followed by a political movement, that will not be very important; then must come a military movement, that will be important indeed" (quoted in Yeats, Autobiography 257).

Even when priority is given to Irish cultural issues, as it ostensibly is in the Saint Patrick's Day issues of the weekly, a similar analysis obtains. The Saint Patrick's Day issue is almost entirely given up to Irish cultural topics, and the cultural features precede the political and economic news. Nevertheless, by being segregated in a special holiday issue, an issue printed on green paper, Irish cultural topics are defined as outside the

main concerns of life; they are relegated to the status of a leisure activity. Much of the potential political effect of an article such as "The Makers of Fenianism," found in the 1902 Saint Patrick's Day issue of the Weekly Freeman , is muted and defused by the position of the article in the overall format of the periodical.

Thus, the Freeman , in its daily and weekly format, can be said to trivialize the Irish revival by placement, proportion, and juxtaposition of the materials pertaining to literary and cultural issues; the same is true of policies having to do with an Irish Ireland or Sinn Féin. Indeed, the Freeman was criticized by other periodicals at the time for precisely these tactics. The 12 April 1902 issue of the Leader charges, "The Freeman is an expert clipper from British papers, but it is very weak on the side of Irish news." The criticism of the Leader on 1 March 1902 is more specific: "The Freeman of Monday gives over a column report to the meeting of the Delegates of the St. Patrick's Eve Demonstration. Nearly the whole of the next column on the right is headed, 'Fashions of the Week,' and comprises a clipping from a British fashion paper. Oh, what a Press." Similar amusing juxtapositions can be noted from the Weekly Freeman. On 2 August 1902 the Irish cultural news shares an opening with "Horse-breeding in Ulster" and "Watering Flowering Plants in Pots," and on 6 September of the same year "The Orthography of the Irish Language" is adjacent to a column entitled "Certain Manures"; on 7 February 1903 the Gaelic League news is next to an article entitled "Swine Fever." It is hard to make much of a cultural revival that must compete for space in the second section of this paper with weekly articles on poultry and beekeeping, as well as the practical "Veterinary Answers," important as those topics were to the agrarian interests of the readers.

In addition, a restricted range of Irish literature is covered in the Freeman's Journal and the Weekly Freeman, and there is no systematic educative program related to Irish culture similar to that of the United Irishman . Though the weekly does carry Hyde's edition of Raftery in 1902, the references to Irish literature are generally to stories that have already become canonized in the contemporary cultural milieu—for example, the narratives about Deirdre or Diarmait and Grainne. There is little program of literary exposure and expansion; rather the Freeman reports on or alludes to Irish literature that has already become popularized in some way. In addition, reviews of Irish publications are limited, for such publications must compete with the entire range of publications in English let-

ters; as a result the space dedicated to Irish books and drama is dwarfed by the space allocated to mainstream theater and mainstream English literature. Authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and English dramatic productions at the commercial theaters get the lion's share of attention in a publication like the Freeman's Journal . An ironic example of this pattern can be seen in the 2 April 1904 issue of the Weekly Freeman, which devotes almost a column on page one to the National Theatre Society's London performances of five plays by Yeats, Synge, and Colum: the society received scant coverage for its Irish performances of the same plays. It is the larger world of England that determines the hierarchy of values in the Freeman. In such ways, then, the Freeman's Journal and the Weekly Freeman define Irish literature as marginal while still reporting about it and presupposing it to a surprising extent; Irish literature is presented when it is in the news, but it is not valorized per se.

The patterns revealed by the coverage of Irish material in the Freeman are similar to those of the other nationalist dailies and weeklies. Like the Freeman , the Irish Daily Independent and Daily Nation , an eight-page, nine-column daily, covers most events having to do with the Irish revival and the language movement: lectures on such topics as Irish architecture of the early Christian period are summarized; there are announcements of the activities and meetings of groups such as the Feis Ceoil Association and the Gaelic League; public events, including the 16 March 1902 demonstration, are reported; a series contrasts the national movements in Ireland and other countries; and so forth.^[26] The Independent also meets the Gaelic League's ideal of publishing some text in Irish—if not daily, then several times a week—often reprinting articles from An Claidheamh Soluis, the weekly penny newspaper of the Gaelic League. Moreover, the Independent shows its sympathy to the language movement by publishing a weekly article entitled "The Irish Language Movement (From Information Supplied by the Gaelic League)," which surveys the most significant events of the week related to the language movement and includes commentary as well. The weekly published by the same press, the Illustrated Irish Weekly Independent and Nation , is similar, reprinting the column entitled "The Irish Language Movement" from the daily,

[26] The Independent was founded by Parnell after the Freeman's Journal withdrew its support from him following his marriage to Kitty O'Shea (Thornton, Allusions in "Ulysses" 266), though it rather quickly became associated with an anti-Parnellite position (Gifford 134, 327).

carrying news of the Gaelic Athletic Association and other organizations related to the Irish revival, and running background articles on Irish topics such as Saint Brendan. Yet we see the same pattern of trivialization of the Irish news by its positioning. In the Weekly Independent, for example, the Irish news may at times be found just before features entitled "The Farm" and "Veterinary Replies," suggesting that its interest is nonpolitical and rural. Paradoxically, also, by having the Gaelic League write the column entitled "The Irish Language Movement," the editorial policy reveals a program of delegation and containment: Irish news is primarily contained in a single weekly article, the writing of which is delegated elsewhere rather than becoming a task to which reportorial staff must be committed.^[27]

In summary, then, the nationalist dailies kept their readers informed of the Irish language movement and the Irish revival as a whole, and frequently they published articles in the Irish language. The allusions to Irish literary topics in the daily press presuppose widespread knowledge of Irish literature and Irish myth among the readers, but the dailies restrict consideration of Irish literature to established or canonized material. The format of these journals does not provide for a systematic educative function about Irish literature, nor do they cover marginal literary subject matter, thereby serving as primary source material for knowledge of literary topics.

The independent weeklies—that is, those unconnected with dailies—are more various in their treatment of the Irish revival and Irish literature and are more situated by their format and function in the culture to have an educative component and thus more apt to have served as sources of literary knowledge for James Joyce and others. These periodicals are generally small in format, rarely larger than 10"x18". They range from periodicals with specific subject content, such as cycling or gardening, to

[27] The Evening Telegraph, a Home Rule daily also published by the Freeman's Journal , is a large-format paper, between eight and ten columns, four pages on weekdays and eight on Saturday. Like the Freeman and the Independent , it too carries news of the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, and similar groups, and it gives a prominent place to news about Irish language events such as Irish Language Week in March 1902. The Telegraph also carries the daily article entitled "Le h-aghaidh na nGaedhilgeoiridhe." But this Irish news is swallowed up in the general coverage, and there is virtually no cultural news or literary news in the smaller weekday issues of the Telegraph at all.

more general publications, which might or might not have a particular political thrust.

The Leader stands as an example of a small-format weekly with a particular political perspective, addressing itself to a broad range of political and cultural concerns. The Leader , a nationalist publication founded by D. P. Moran, was begun in 1900; its sixteen small-format (8.5"x13"), pages of articles are encased in an advertising supplement of eight additional pages. The periodical's issues are divided roughly in two, with an extensive commentary on current events by the editor preceding a series of signed articles on particular topics. The Leader is more radical in its politics than are most of the weeklies, and it approaches the United Irishman in its political orientation, though a greater moral conservatism is plain throughout; it was very influential among the undergraduates of University College, with Joyce one of the few to resist its influence.^[28] The publication promotes an "Irish Ireland" program and actively supports the language movement, though it lacks the coherent political program of Arthur Griffith's publication. Essentially political commentary, often of a polemical sort, with highly charged rhetoric in the editor's commentary, the magazine focused on politics; Manganiello has characterized its policies as "almost entirely negative" (25). The editor enjoyed controversy, as indicated, for example, by the publication on 2 May 1904 of Osborn Bergin's acidic review of Douglas Hyde's prize essay published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language; Bergin intimated that Hyde's command of Irish was less than adequate, and the review occasioned a defense of Hyde by Eleanor Hull on 23 May and an another acerbic response by Bergin, then a relatively young man, on 6 June. It was Moran who led the sloganeering against "West Britons" and "shoneens" in Ireland. Although Joyce disagreed with many of its positions, he read the Leader and used its materials: disagreement did not deter him from using the publication as a source for his work.^[29]

The subtitle of the Leader is "A Review of Current Affairs, Politics, Literature, Art and Industry," but the space devoted to literary questions is restricted, and the periodical is primarily political in its orientation. An

[28] Manganiello (24–25, 116–18, 124) discusses the political views of the Leader.

[29] Manganiello (117–18) gives an example of how material from the Leader lies behind the interchange between Bloom and the Citizen.

article in Irish on a topic of current interest is a weekly feature. There are reviews of Irish theater and regular announcements of the publication of new books on Irish literature and language, but there are few sustained articles on Irish literary topics and there is no attempt at a systematic educative program like that of the United Irishman. Nonetheless, some material about Irish culture is included; in 1902, for example, the Leader provided its readers with, among other things, a series of articles about traditional Irish singing, a review of a lecture on Celtic ornament (15 Mar.), articles debating the direction of modern drama in Irish and English, articles on the Feis Ceoil, an article on Eoghan Ruadh O'Sullivan (10 May), articles on Irish poetic composition (31 May, 7 June, 28 June, 12 July), a series of articles on Irish prose composition, a concerted campaign against the Stage Irishman, and an overview of Irish literature in 1902 (6 Dec.).

Of the small-format periodicals, Standish O'Grady's All Ireland Review comes the closest to the United Irishman in the volume of its coverage of early Irish literature. The publication began on 6 January 1900 as an eight-page, two-column magazine; its paper covers were filled with advertisements. It was considered by many the organ of the Irish literary revival and is much more a literary and cultural journal than a political one, though many issues with broad political implications are discussed. There are regular reviews of Irish books and the theatrical productions of the Irish dramatic movement; Irish musical events are publicized and reviewed; and contributors to the periodical include Yeats, Gregory, A. E., and other members of the literary revival. A weekly article gives simple instruction in the Irish language.

O'Grady published weekly features pertaining to early Irish literature and history as well. Initially O'Grady serialized his own retelling of Táin Bá Cúailnge, which appeared under the title "In the Gates of the North," but he provided more substantive material also, such as his serialization of the initial segments of the Annals of the Four Masters to A.D. 432 accompanied by topographical notes, which began on 2 March 1901 and continued to the middle of 1902. In spring 1900, under the heading "Recent Translations from Gaelic," T. W. Rolleston discussed early Irish stories in Standish Hayes O'Grady's Silva Gadelica, Kuno Meyer's Voyage of Bran , Eleanor Hull's Cuchullin Saga , and the Irish Texts Society's publication of The Feast of Bricriu ; Rolleston also included in his survey folklore materials by Jeremiah Curtin and William Larminie, George Si-

gerson's Bards of the Gael and Gall , and Douglas Hyde's translations of "The Adventures of the Lad of the Ferule" and "The Adventures of the Sons of the King of Norway," both published by the Irish Texts Society. Other summaries of early Irish stories are found scattered throughout the run, such as the summaries of The Wooing of Etain and Cophur in dá Muccida (The Story of the Two Swineherds) (6 Oct. 1900), the stories of Cliodna and Rudraige (6 Apr. 1901), The Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise (6 Apr. 1901), and tales of lake eruptions (25 May 1901). In the first issue of 1902 O'Grady began the serialization of Whitley Stokes's translation of The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel , reprinting it from Revue celtique but with the "nude-antique" elements expunged (cf. 8 Feb. 1902, 433); this series continued until 19 July 1902. Windisch's translation of The Story of Mac Datho's Pig was reprinted from Irische Texte in the issue of 20 December 1902. Beginning 8 November 1902, a sustained series on the gods of Ireland discusses material in The Book of Invasions, as well as specific figures including the Dagda, MacCecht, Anu, the sons of Tuirenn, Oengus, Bodb Derg, Lug, Midir, the Morrigan, Macha, Manannan, Fintan, Diancecht, and others. There is also other material about mythic figures, including Cesair (30 Mar. 1901), the Dagda (27 Apr. 1901), MacColl, MacCecht, and MacGreine (7 Sept. 1901), and the mythical invaders of Ireland (18 and 25 May 1901). The Irish festivals are discussed with articles on Beltaine (4 Jan. 1902) and Lugnasad (14 Sept. 1901). In addition O'Grady provides various critical discussions of early Irish literature, stressing the interlacing of history and myth in Irish literature (18 Aug. 1900, 2 Mar. 1901, 16 Mar. 1901, 4 May 1901) and comparing Irish tradition to the Greek in this regard. An extract from D'Alton's History of Ireland was published on 29 November 1902. The periodical carries the text of a lecture by Sigerson entitled "The Basis of Irish Myths" (25 May 1901), underscoring the mythopoeic imagination of the Irish, as well as a lecture on Irish poetry in the same issue that contains important early Irish poems. O'Grady's weekly also provides material about Irish prosody (e.g., 9 Aug. 1902).

In addition to discussions and summaries of early Irish literature, Modern Irish folklore, particularly fairy lore, is discussed or summarized frequently. Other cultural material is provided as well, including material about Irish costume (18 Aug. 1900). Irish history has a regular place in O'Grady's periodical. Under the title "The Spaniards in Ireland" a systematic account of seventeenth-century Irish history is given beginning in

August 1900 and continuing piecemeal for most of a year. We find material about Irish saints (14 Dec. 1901), and a series questioning the traditions about Saint Patrick is reprinted from Heinrich Zimmer's Celtic Church in Great Britain and Ireland (beginning 15 Nov. 1902). Particulars of the Irish language are discussed including the Irish dual (14 Dec. 1901), and one series discusses cognates to Irish words in other Indo-European languages (beginning 16 Mar. 1901).

The range and volume of materials presented by O'Grady are impressive, but the coverage of such topics in the All Ireland Review is more dilute and less systematic than is the presentation of corresponding material in the United Irishman . This difference is apparent in O'Grady's tendency to print fictionalized retellings such as "In the Gates of the North" rather than more straightforward presentations such as Best's extensive summaries with bibliographical apparatus in the United Irishman . Moreover, when O'Grady does set out to summarize or publish scholarly material, the treatment is less thorough. The format of the All Ireland Review is partly responsible for the restrictions in its literary materials, for the small format of the periodical (eight pages of 10"×14.75"), the large print (two columns of nine words per line), and the wide leading between lines (eighty-six lines per page) mean that the contents of any one issue are quite limited. It follows that there is a corresponding limitation on the total output of the paper with respect to any one topic such as early Irish literature. Thus, even in the case of a scholarly publication, such as the reprinting of Stokes's translation of The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel , publication must be protracted over a period of seven months in order to fit the text within the scope of interests represented in the periodical as a whole. This compares with the 6600-word detailed summary of the same tale published in three weeks in the United Irishman in Best's "Bardic Tales" series, made possible by the dense format and larger size of that publication. The systematic educative purpose of O'Grady's periodical likewise suffers in comparison to that of the United Irishman ; again the publication of Da Derga's Hostel is instructive, for in the same time that O'Grady devotes to this important story, the United Irishman was able to survey and summarize almost two dozen central stories of early Irish literature, thus giving its readers a much broader and more systematic exposure to the range of early Irish literature.

The political tenor of O'Grady's weekly is also much more conservative than is that of the United Irishman . O'Grady appeals to the Ascendancy in various ways. In a series called "Mr. Goodenough," he focuses on the land question, expressing confidence in the landed gentry to see the light and reform their practice voluntarily; he satirizes rather than execrates the position of the landlords. O'Grady also stays strictly loyalist, in 1900 signing an open letter to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Ireland "your loving subject"—this at a time when the United Irishman was supporting a boycott of the Queen's visit. Though the journal presented interesting materials pertaining to early Irish history and literature—materials that Joyce might have used, such as the articles on the Spaniards in Ireland—the overall appeal of O'Grady's periodical to Joyce would have been limited.

Another periodical not unlike O'Grady's is Dana , a small (5.25"×8.25"), thirty-two-page monthly begun in May 1904 by W. K. Magee (John Eglinton) and Frederick Ryan that ran until April 1905. Magee figures in the library episode of Ulysses , where there is ironic byplay about his having taken the "poetic" pseudonym of John Eglinton; in the discussion about Hamlet , prefiguring the techniques of the Nighttown episode, the text reads: "MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names! What's in a name?" (9.900–901). The episode also refers overtly to the goddess Danu (Dana) (9.376) and to the periodical itself (9.322, 9.1081), which was named after the goddess. The majority of the young men conversing in the library episode are associated with Dana , either as editor or as contributors; the latter include Magee himself, T. W. Lyster, and A. E., as well as Oliver St. John Gogarty (as Mulligan) and Joyce (as Stephen). Thus, the company gathered is part of a certain intellectual niche in contemporary Dublin associated with the program and views of Dana .

The particular interest of this periodical is literature, as its inaugural statement makes clear: "Of the various forms which patriotic ambition takes in the minds of Irishmen at the present time, perhaps the most generally favoured and the least impracticable, is a zeal for the promotion of a national literature" (May 1904). Though Joyce left Ireland soon after the publication was begun, he continued to be interested (however ironically that interest is expressed) in it and its editors once he was abroad, as his correspondence indicates (e.g., Letters 2: 208–9), in part because Dana published his poem "My love is in a light attire" in August 1904.

In 1920 Dana was part of Joyce's library left behind in Trieste when he moved to Paris (Ellmann, Consciousness of Joyce 105);^[30] articles in Dana therefore contributed to Joyce's thinking about various topics. In the January 1905 issue an article by John Eglinton, "The Island of Saints," may have provided source material for Joyce's Trieste lectures in 1907, and the February 1905 issue has an article on Merriman that appeared as The Midnight Court was being concurrently published by Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie.The Midnight Court is summarized carefully and described as "the most tasteful composition in modern Irish," lacking "pessimistic alienation from the joy of life"; the form is identified as "the mediaeval Aisling " (Feb. 1905, 297–99). Had Joyce not known Merriman's text from other sources, the Dana article would have served his purposes in Ulysses .

There are also reviews of the first two volumes of Ériu as well as the supplementary volume containing the edition of the Yellow Book of Lecan text of Táin Bó Cúailnge edited by John Strachan and J. G. O'Keeffe (Sept. 1904 and Mar. 1905); Ériu is recommended as "interesting to anyone who without knowing the language wishes to know something of Celtic literature in its original shape and native garb" (Sept. 1904, 156). A reader of this issue would have here clear notice that the refractions of the Irish revival diverged from the medieval originals. The September 1904 issue of Dana also includes a review of Eleanor Knott's Pagan Ireland .

Most of the Irish weeklies are specialized in their content orientation and, because of their focus, carry little information about the Irish literary revival or Irish literature. The Irish Field and Gentleman's Gazette , for example, restricts its purview to such topics as horses and hounds, coursing, shooting, hunting, racing, rugby, and motoring, as well as ancillary news related to the audience—society news. Other specialty weeklies carry materials related to Irish literature and the Irish revival in a marginal capacity. Here we must place the Irish Catholic , a weekly with the format of a daily paper (20.5" × 24", eight pages, eight columns per page). Most of the news concerns Rome, Irish ecclesiastics, and world news with specific interest to Catholics. But Irish literary topics find a

[30] Manganiello (38) discusses Joyce's views on Dana and its political positions.

place when they intersect with Catholic interests: thus, the lectures by the Rev. Edmund Hogan, S.J., on such topics as "The Story of Irish Speech" (15 Mar. 1902) and "Language and Nationality" (29 Mar. 1902) are reported in the periodical. In the same way, since Irish Language Week and the demonstration on 16 March 1902 were supported by various Catholic groups including the Christian Brothers, these events are included in the news of the weekly. Naturally, the Irish Catholic also includes articles about Saint Patrick and other medieval saints. This periodical is of interest less as a source for Joyce, who by temperament would scarcely have been a regular reader, than as an index of the extent to which a modicum of knowledge about Irish literature and history was widespread throughout the Catholic population of Ireland, even the most conservative.

The Irish Homestead serves as another example of a specialized weekly with a narrow content orientation that nonetheless disseminated material about the Irish revival. The Homestead was the organ of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society; as such, it is almost rigorously apolitical in the narrow sense of the word, and it has such regular features as "Seasonable Farm Notes," "Creamery Management," and "Poultry Notes." A. E. assumed the editorship of this periodical in 1906, but even before this period he and others of the literary revival were frequent contributors. The agricultural articles are placed first in the Irish Homestead , with the second half of the periodical having more general domestic appeal. It is here we find a weekly short story; the literary interests of the Homestead are banal, and the weekly story is of the most sentimental sort. In 1904 A. E. suggested that Joyce write a story for the Homestead, thus giving the idea for Dubliners to Joyce, but it is no wonder that Joyce was unable to place more than three of his short stories ("The Sisters," "Eveline," and "After the Race") with the publication; indeed, given the tone of most stories published by the Homestead , it is surprising that he should have been published at all in this forum.^[31]

[31] "The Sisters" appears in the 13 August 1904 issue, and Joyce signed it "Stephen Daedalus" because he was ashamed to publish in the journal. Joyce was asked not to submit other stories because readers had complained about his work. See JJ 2 163–64 for these events. In Ulysses Stephen passes one copy of Deasy's letter to A. E. for publication in the Homestead , referring mentally to it as "the pigs' paper" (9.321); thus, Stephen's concern about becoming known as the "bullockbefriending" bard is related to Joyce's own embarrassment about publishing in this agricultural journal.

Yet even this publication tips its hat to the Irish language movement with a weekly literary piece in Irish that is accompanied by an English translation. Through this feature readers of the magazine would have been exposed to poems from Hyde's Love Songs of Connacht , poems from the dindsenchas^[*] , poems by Keating, and so forth; in some cases (e.g., 1 Feb. 1902) there are brief discussions of Irish metrics and other general cultural topics. The imagery of the Irish material is often typical of the tradition, including, for example, personifications of Ireland as woman, sacred well imagery, and the like. The Christmas supplement to the periodical also carries stories, poems, and drawings by members of the Anglo-Irish literary revival such as Augusta Gregory, W. B. Yeats, Douglas Hyde, and A. E. Overall the Homestead conveys an aura of timeless rural tranquility and well-being, assiduously avoiding politics and even simple cultural developments. Though the publication had only the scantest interest in the literary and cultural developments of the period—for example, not even mentioning the productions of the Irish National Theatre Society in 1902—it nevertheless offered its readers a minimal exposure to Irish literature and the Irish language, though the level on which these topics are incorporated would not suffice for any substantive knowledge.

Among the specialty periodicals of the time are also the publications of the Gaelic League: the weekly penny newspaper Claidheamh Soluis and the monthly Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge, The Gaelic Journal , a more "high-class" literary magazine (United Irishman 24 Nov. 1900). Paradoxically, these periodicals offer little more systematic education about Irish literature and history than do the periodicals already discussed, but for a different reason: the Gaelic League publications are too close to the topics to give a broad overview. In addition, it is language per se that engages the interest of the League rather than literature or history. These periodicals were widely read among nationalists, and notices of the issues appear regularly in the United Irishman .

The Dublin Penny Journal , subtitled "a Magazine of Art, Archaeology, Literature, and Science," is another specialty weekly in small format (9.5"× 12") that provided its readers with information about Irish culture; its articles contain a good deal of historical information, particularly about Dublin. It was short-lived, running from 5 April 1902 to 25 March 1905, but during this period it printed a number of interesting series, in-

cluding the long-running (5 Apr.–20 Sept. 1901) series entitled "The History and Antiquities of Dublin," a reprinting of materials from Walter Harris's history of the same title. Series on Fenian lore and a reprinting of materials by John O'Donovan, "Origins and Meanings of Irish Family Names," in 1902 are also noteworthy. The antiquarian interest of the journal focuses primarily on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but there are occasional pieces on medieval Ireland as well, including, for example, the 12 April 1902 article "Ancient Beverages of Ireland" or the 3 May 1902 article "Ancient Irish Society," which gives an adequate introduction to the familial, tribal, and hierarchical aspects of the culture. The journal contains a fair amount of information about placelore, particularly Dublin placelore; it is interesting to find that Chapelizod is discussed in particular (17 May and 31 May 1902). There are informative articles 253.160 about Irish calendar customs, such as the article on May Day (Beltaine) on 31 May 1902, as well as articles about the Irish gods (31 May 1902) and numerous articles about the stories and placelore of the Finn Cycle (beginning June 1902). Robert Adams (141–42) has argued that Joyce used Harris rather than the annals in Thom's Directory for the reference to the beaching of turlehyde whales in Dublin harbor (U 3.303–6); inasmuch as the key words of Harris's text on which Adams's argument rests also appear in the Dublin Penny Journal reprinting, it is possible that Joyce is indebted to the periodical for his reading of Harris and, if so, that he would have known other articles as well.

This survey of the periodical literature of Ireland at the turn of the century indicates that there was a general awareness of Irish cultural nationalism among the population, particularly the Catholic nationalist population, and with it a relatively high level of knowledge about early Irish literature and history. Certain aspects of the literature had become canonical in Ireland. The main lines of a patriotic history and an Irish pseudohistory based on The Book of Invasions were also widely presumed. Moreover, the popular press extended the boundaries of that common knowledge with occasional features on Irish prosody and literary pieces that reinforced traditional Irish imagery, including rose imagery, otherworld imagery, and Sovereignty imagery. In short, the principal features of the Irish substructure of Ulysses were common knowledge in the Irish milieu that Joyce was part of at the beginning of the century, and most of the elements traced in this book would have been familiar to the public

at large.^[32] Yet even within a populace with a significant fund of common knowledge about Irish literary tradition, in choosing to be a regular reader of the United Irishman , Joyce would have been conspicuous among nonspecialists for his interest in and knowledge of Irish literature and history. No other periodical or popular source has a comparable range and depth of coverage of Irish cultural topics, nor does any have a similar educative program. Joyce preferred to read the Irish weekly most calculated to give him a broad, systematic, and sympathetic presentation of Irish history and literature. Thus, the view of Joyce as an author anti-pathetical to the Irish cultural revival and uninterested in Irish tradition or mythos must be reevaluated; Joyce situated himself in the cultural spectrum in such a way that he was among the best informed of those who used popular vehicles to instruct themselves about Irish literary and historical tradition.

v. Ideas in General Circulation in Popular Irish Culture at the Turn of the Century

Beyond acting as indicators of Joyce's familiarity with Irish literature and history, the periodicals are also useful in illuminating Joyce's literary program in Ulysses . Even from a small sampling, what quickly emerges is that much of what is taken as original to Joyce's views and a Joycean aesthetic was widely discussed in the popular press in Ireland before Joyce's departure in 1904. The following discussion, which could be broadened considerably, is restricted to the way popular culture influenced Joyce's treatment of Irish mythos and literary tradition in Ulysses . More general values and positions affecting Joyce's role as an artist are deferred to another occasion, but the following sampling should indicate how promising an area of research this is for Joyce scholars.

[32] The widespread knowledge of many stories is indicated in articles in the United Irishman , for example. On 3 March 1900, in a review of the Irish Literary Theatre, Frank Fay writes, "Maeve which would probably succeed in mystifying an English audience was listened to with rapt attention and with an instinctive understanding of its symbolism"; cf. Gregory, Our Irish Theatre 28–29. Again on 26 October 1901, in writing about Diarmuid and Grania , Fay indicates that the story was familiar to the audience and the public at large; Holloway (16–17) indicates that the symbolism of Cathleen ni Houlihan was likewise familiar to its initial audiences. Such examples of the observed familiarity of Irish audiences and the Irish readership with a "canon" of Irish stories and a repertory of Irish symbols is thus well documented.

The method here is to contextualize features of the contents and poetics of Ulysses by juxtaposing materials from contemporary sources with Joyce's views and his manipulation of Irish literature. Examination of related materials from the popular press makes it easier to apprehend the ways in which Joyce continued to be influenced by popular Irish culture, even after he had left Ireland. Working on the Continent, he nonetheless took partisan stands in the nationalist debates of Ireland; as Manganiello has put it, "Exile did not mean escape but a widening of political consciousness; it did not mean indifference but preserving his intimacy with his country by intensifying his quarrel with her. . . . In whatever part of Europe he resided, Joyce, like Dante, carried with him a consciousness of the political situation of his city and of his country" (41–43). An examination of the periodical literature that Joyce read in his formative years enables us to position his poetics in the spectrum of the discourse of Irish cultural nationalism and to understand his writings, particularly Ulysses , as a partial response to the issues raised in contemporary Ireland.

Discussions of Racial Identity: The Everyday Celt

Joyce's interest in racial identity, discussed in chapter 2, is in part an outgrowth of a discourse about race and nationality that had been a leitmotif of Western thought for more than a century and that is in turn reflected in Irish journals at the turn of the century.^[33] The connection between political autonomy and racial or cultural distinctiveness was an issue of paramount interest, and it partly underlies the emergence of the movement toward cultural autonomy in Sinn Féin. For example, in the Illustrated Irish Weekly Independent and Nation of 29 March 1902 an article entitled "Language and Nationality" argues against the thesis that Ireland has forfeited her right to autonomy because (unlike Hungary, Bohemia, Finland, and Norway) she has put aside her native language and adopted the dress, customs, speech, and literature of her conquerors. The writers of the Anglo-Irish literary revival all carry on a dialogue about Irish racial and cultural identity: such figures as A. E. and Yeats stress the mysticism of the Irish, thus following in Matthew Arnold's wake, while others such as Gregory focus more on the simplicity and integrity of the

[33] See the discussion of these issues in Martin Bernal, Black Athena .

Irish countrypeople, and still others such as Synge subvert the views of fellow writers by writing of the earthy, sensual aspects of country life.

Joyce's concern about race must be understood in the context of this dialogue; he is interested in retaining English as a language in Ireland, and he is content with international urban dress, customs, and mores, but his search for an Irish identity, even as he rejects the notion of Irish racial purity, suggests the force of this dilemma for him. Although the surface of Joyce's narrative appears to be less involved in this question than are the overt treatments of it by his contemporaries, the racial parameter of the architectonics from The Book of Invasions in Ulysses also shows that these issues were important to Joyce. Joyce's architectonic structure permitted him to engage in a dialectic about Irishness and the characteristics of "the Irish race" in Ulysses while submerging the topic in the mythic structuring, thus giving him scope to comment on a central issue of his culture without being polemical or didactic. Such mythic discourse, whether implicit or sublimated, provided Joyce an opportunity to speak to the ideological concerns of his time while remaining within the bounds of art as he viewed it.

In Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Joyce has characters who are worlds apart from the mystical nature of many of Yeats's mythic Irish figures. This is one of the many polarities in the treatment of Ireland-as-literary-world by Yeats and Joyce; still another is the dichotomy of city and country. Joyce's stand on how to represent Ireland is related to views debated in the popular press. The United Irishman , for example, observes as early as 6 May 1899 that "there are other things in Ireland beside the rowancrested rath, the dew upon the grass, or the reeds above the rivers." The debate can best be illustrated by an article in the Leader on 7 May 1904 entitled "The Different Kinds of Celt":

The new Celt is the Yeats type, to say which should be almost enough. The new Celt is a mixture of moonshine, and mist, and dreams; he wanders (both corporeally and mentally) in waste places, such as bogs, moors, mountain sides, woods, and so forth. He is haunted by the lapping of lakes . . . by the murmur of druid forests. . . .

A striking peculiarity of the new Celt is that he does not eat or drink. How does he live, then? On dreams, thou fool, on dreams!—plus "visions," occasionally. He does not sully the soulfulness of his nature with sordid mundaneity; he lives as a spirit, and is consequently a cut or two above bread or bacon.

Now this sort of Celt, the "literary" Celt let us call him, had begun to gain a certain amount of acceptance in London—that is, in literary London. . . . However, a revulsion of feeling seems to have set in, and it appears to be dawning even on literary London that the new Celt does not quite square with facts. A writer in the Spectator . . . . had been reading Dr. Joyce's Social History of Ancient Ireland , and it began to strike him that the Celt of mere history was not quite like the Celt of Mr. Yeats. . . . We are all with the writer when, after some bantering remarks he adds: "But seriously, it is time to turn from the mystic to the more human sides of the Gael: the men of the ancient epics could dream, but they could love and fight on occasion, and could look on Nature without an ever-boding sense of the presence of unseen powers."

Quite so. Now there is another, and altogether un-Yeats-like Celt—the Celt I want to see. I mean the everyday Celt. The Celt who doesn't live on visions or mists, but who eats rashers and eggs; who smokes a pipe and drinks a pint; who may be met with in the streets, on the country roads, in third-class carriages, and on the tops of trams; who reads the ha'penny evening papers, goes to "the bob place" in the theatre or music-hall now and then, and to a football match whenever he can; I want to see that Celt.

The article proceeds to call for the representation of the everyday Celt in the contemporary novel:

Do you know what Ireland badly wants? She wants a great novelist. Not simply a very high-class second-rank one, but a great one, and no mistake about his—or her—greatness. We want a novelist with as good a head, as much solid culture, as much genuine knowledge of the people as George Eliot possessed. . . . We want to have Irish life thrown into the alembic of genius and drawn off as literature; given back again to us in a sort of sublimated realism, delightful, yet recognisably true, and free from all the mud and vitriol of politics and polemics. We want to get rid of that tenuous exiguity, the "literary" Celt, no less than of that over-whiskified person, the Celt of the "rollicking" school of writers. We want the Irishman that we know; a man that we can mix with, and not feel revolted at; that we can laugh with rather oftener than at ; a man that we are not ashamed of, because we see that he is not only quite human, but has no mean sordid faults, and no inherent coarseness of soul. In a word, we want justice done to the Irish character through the medium of prose literature—of the novel.

Leopold Bloom is cousin to this everyday Celt, and it is perhaps no accident that Joyce shows him eating and drinking repeatedly, leaving none of these repasts to the gaps between episodes. The note of "the everyday Celt" is sounded at the first appearance of Bloom: though Bloom rejects

eggs because of the drouth and prefers animal organs to rashers, and though his trip to the jakes would no doubt have offended the sensibilities of the writer of this Leader article, Joyce makes clear from the outset that Bloom lives on more than dreams and visions. Bloom is met in the streets, in carriages, on trams; he reads ordinary papers and goes to common amusements. He loves and occasionally fights like the men of the ancient epics. It is only gradually in the course of Ulysses that the reader realizes that Bloom also has the decency and refinement of soul that the article calls for. As this article indicates, criticism of Yeats's mystic Celt was common in contemporary Irish culture; thus, Joyce's revisionism is inscribed in a wider cultural context.

Bloom and the characters of Ulysses are in part representative of the Irish in virtue of the subtext from The Book of Invasions, but in their realistic or everyday guise they are also continuous with the types to be found in Dublin. Ulysses fits the criterion set forth in the Leader article of having Irish life thrown into the alembic of genius and drawn off as literature—given back in realism sublimated by form, a form delightful, playful, yet recognizably true. For all the objectionable matter in the book,^[34] in its own way Ulysses is free from "the mud and vitriol of politics and polemics," and it is written by an author with "solid culture" and "a genuine knowledge of the people."

Irish Meet Greeks Meet Jews Meet Spaniards Meet Norse

In the popular press the Irish character is often defined through comparison and contrast with a wide variety of other "races" being used as a standard. The English naturally come in for a variety of invidious comments, but other groups are also discussed. There are, for example, discussions of the "racial" characteristics of the Jews; in the Leader of 4 June 1904, an article entitled "The Jew Question in Ireland" characterizes the Jews as possessing the virtues of sobriety, thrift, and providence. The Norse (e.g., All Ireland Review 12 May 1900) and the Spanish (discussed, for example, at length in the All Ireland Review, which carried a series in the spring of 1901 entitled "The Spaniards in Ireland") also come in

[34] See, for example, Bernard Shaw's comments quoted in JJ 2 506–7, 576–77.

for examination. These issues pervade Ulysses as, for example, in the leitmotif of discussions about the characteristics of the English (e.g. 2.243–54, 7.483–501). The question of Jews in Ireland was particularly topical before Bloomsday because of an episode of persecution of Jews in Limerick in spring 1904 (cf. Leader 7 May 1904);^[35] the historical context may explain much of the sensitivity to the question of Bloom's "racial" background among the characters of Ulysses on Bloomsday. Joyce's interest in these questions is also pursued in Ulysses through the substructure from The Book of Invasions, by means of which Joyce represents the relations of the Irish to the Jews and the Spanish, just as in Finnegans Wake the affinities and contrasts between Gael and Gall, Irish and Norse, are embodied in HCE's mixed ancestry.

A frequent topic in the popular press is a comparison of Irish and Greek character and culture. O'Grady in the All Ireland Review compares the unity of thought and feeling in Ireland to that of Greece in the issue of 2 March 1901; two weeks later he compares Irish and Greek myth; and on 4 May of the same year he compares the interlacing of history and myth in both cultures. In a similar vein the Illustrated Irish Weekly Independent and Nation of 29 March 1902 carries a report about a lecture to the Irish Literary Society in which the speaker stresses that the Irish nation dates back to the time of Greece and Rome. At times the comparison could turn to the advantage of the Irish: thus, in an article entitled "Gael and Greek" of 10 May 1902, the Leader criticizes a lecture delivered by Dr. Barry to the National Literary Society and maintains that Greek ideals are not worthy of imitation.

Because of the prestige and status associated with Greek culture, either to equate or to prefer early Irish culture to Greek culture was a means of validating Irish literature and society. Such comparisons became topoi of Irish nationalism, and they were found in monographs as well as in the popular press. Obviously this discourse conditions Ulysses with its melding of Greek and Irish character, myth, and literature; rather than comment on or argue for the parity of Greek and Irish culture, however, Joyce presupposes this nationalist position in the conflation of the mythic systems, a mythic method that makes Bloom simultaneously a Greek hero and Irish Milesian. The mythic structuring presents the two traditions as

[35] Manganiello (52) discusses this episode in relation to Joyce's views about anti-Semitism.

equivalent, thus asserting Joyce's estimation of the ranking of Irish culture while permitting him a certain ironic disengagement from both.

Localism

Joyce's detestation of "nationalisms" is well known,^[36] and in a letter of 25 September 1906 to his brother Stanislaus he criticizes Arthur Griffith and the United Irishman in these terms: "What I object to most of all in his paper is that it is educating the people of Ireland on the old pap of racial hatred whereas anyone can see that if the Irish question exists, it exists for the Irish proletariat chiefly" (Letters 2: 167). Joyce's desire to be European and universal is generally stressed in critical works on his texts. Though Joyce objected to nationalism, at the same time he believed that artists had to be national. Let us return to the encounter between Joyce and Arthur Power in 1921. When Power objected that he was tired of nationality and wanted to be international like all the great writers, Joyce responded:

But they were national first . . . and it was the intensity of their own nationalism which made them international in the end, as in the case of Turgenieff. You remember his "Tales of the Sportsman," how local they were—and yet out of that germ he became a great international writer. For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal. (Quoted in Power, From the Old Waterford House 64–65)

The same quality that he praises here in Turgenev he found in Ibsen; in his January 1900 lecture entitled "Drama and Life" he contends, "Ghosts, the action of which passes in a common parlour, is of universal import" (CW 45). For Joyce the universal in literature is manifest in the local, and it is interesting to find that the views he expressed to Power were anticipated twenty years earlier by articles in the popular Irish press.

The polarities of localism and universality were debated in the pages of the United Irishman. A particularly telling article, "Localism in Poetry," appeared on 18 August 1900, signed "Hy Faely":

Now, no man ever was, or in this life, ever can be universal in the sense of knowing all things. But he who has studied his fellows around him, and

[36] See, for example, MBK 174 and JJ 2 66.

he who has studied himself, if he have the power of wielding a pen, can give you such a representation of the whole working of humanity from his knowledge of a few, that would almost make us think his mind was all-seeing and his knowledge unlimited. Nowhere, have we found more real philosophy compressed into a few words than in this line from an Irish poet "I sing of what I know." He sang of the lives and pleasures of those he knew, "of the hills and the streams and glens that he knew and loved," and, unconsciously, perhaps, he was singing the great paean of humanity. The greatest minds that have ever illumined the world have gone no further than this. Take up the works of any great writer you will who has made a romance and a story of our follies and our passions and you will find him, while universal, yet local. . . .

. . . Localism in literature is a distinctive mark of genius! But I wish to be understood. When I say localism I mean the localism that will suggest to any man home-thoughts and feelings. William Allingham sang of the "Winding Banks of Erne," of the town of Ballyshannon, of the townspeople and the boatmen, of all he knew there. His poems must touch everyone, not because he writes of Ballyshannon, but because he sang a universal song, the love of home; but that it should touch the hearts of others the song required to come from his own heart. To me his poem brings up in visionary light another town upon the coast, another stream, another harbour, other ruins than those of Assaroe, and other people. Because he sang our song, because he felt our feelings, because he pictured what we all would picture, he is universal. Thus is localism universal.

But to be a distinctive mark of genius, this localism must represent universality. To make this localism universally felt the poet must possess genius. Without the localism the genius is wasted. No man can sing of what he knows not; both powers must go hand in hand. A poet may sing of nothing but home scenes, and yet because he lacks the power to make his picture representative he will fail to reach us; he may have genius, and yet, wanting the power of localising, he is lost. . . .

To our poets, I would say: speak from the heart; doing so you must speak of what you love; love will lend you power; and singing, as Allingham did, of what you know, if you are poets possessing the Promethean fire, you will sing the while the mighty song of humanity all the world over.

In a sense this view of localism informs the work of the entire Irish literary revival. It is the striving to write "what they knew"—what they knew that English writers did not—that forms the theoretical ground of the Irish literary movement. In the case of the principal writers localism takes a variety of forms. Thus, Augusta Gregory attempts to represent

peasant life and peasant speech, particularly the Anglo-Irish dialect of Kiltartan. J. M. Synge turns his hand principally to life in the Gaeltacht and to the transposition of the Irish language into English. Yeats shows his localism chiefly in his use of Irish myth, hero tale, and legend—localism of the imagination rather than localism of geography or dialect. Localism of various sorts is the driving force behind the minor figures of the revival as well, and it has continued to dominate Irish literature throughout the twentieth century, from O'Casey and Austin Clarke to Kavanagh, Kinsella, and Heaney.

In the United Irishman time and again we also find the view that preservation of the knowledge of Irish geography, topography, local legend, and local history are of particular importance. These concerns are stressed in an article entitled "Irish Topography" by William Rooney on 24 November 1900:^[37]

It does not need the present writer to point out how inseparably intertwined with each other are geography and topography. Both are fascinating studies, but the latter is possibly the more fascinating, because it is the local and the homely, it tells us of things about us, it brings us from the generalities of geography to the particularities of the places we have grown up in. It is the blending of tradition, history, and locality that makes the past live and keeps the memory of great things and abiding influence to inspire the present.

Rooney himself is particularly interested in preserving the Irish nomenclature, concerns echoed recently in Brian Friel's Translations. He continues:

We, by turning our backs on our language, have lost the power that these memories would give us. . . . We feel not the sympathy [in places]. . . . which the knowledge of the story of their names would give us . . . These old names carry us back even beyond historic days, recall names and deeds that loom on the border line of history, in those dim days where the mists of tradition bide and all the figures have a mighty majesty. They tell us of the origin of loughs and rivers, why this hollow is so called, and where is the cairn that has lived down time upon yon mountain top. They teach us of the work of the centuries, hold within them the secrets of the far off years. . . . The value

[37] This article is signed "Shel Martin," one of Rooney's pseudonyms; for a list of the pseudonyms, see the obituary on Rooney in the United Irishman, 11 May 1901.

of such knowledge cannot be overestimated. It is a priceless heirloom, for the loss of which no amount of commercial success can compensate.

In the article Rooney recommends P. W. Joyce's Irish Names of Places; despite its defects he finds it "the only volume on the subject yet obtainable . . .an excellent book."

Knowledge of local sites and topography at the turn of the century was accordingly considered an index of nationalism in some quarters. On 18 February 1905 the United Irishman ran an article entitled "The Study of Local History," from which the following excerpts are taken:

The attitude of immovable apathy and unconcern towards all things Irish which characterises so many of those whom, by courtesy, we call Irishmen, is nowhere more evident than in their ignorance of Local History, and of the traditions (veracious or legendary), of the fine old ruins that in bewildering profusion dot every parish of our country . . .

There are, for instance, Dubliners who would distinguish themselves in a discussion on the Legends of the Rhine, but are unaware of the existence of Kilgobbin Castle. . . .

One reason why the study of local history would not be without profit to us is that it could hardly fail to develop a feeling of national self-respect, a virtue with which it will not be contended that we are unduly gifted at present. . . .

. . . The writer who is sufficiently energetic to apply himself to such necessary and patriotic work will earn the gratitude, not only of his thoughtful contemporaries, but of generations of Irishmen yet unborn.

Though there is much in these articles that Joyce would have found objectionable, it is clear that the role of topography in Joyce's works is related to ideas concerning localism in literature and the importance of Irish topography that were widespread in Ireland at the turn of the century. Joyce begins with the impulse toward localism that is characteristic of the Irish literary revival as a whole; as Joyce himself noted to Arthur Power, his localism is seen in the fact that all his works are written about Ireland and about Dublin in particular. Like O'Casey, Joyce's localism is expressed in terms of Irish urban life rather than country life, but the scrupulous attention to the topography and traditions of Dublin found in Joyce's writings fit squarely in Rooney's program, even though Joyce rarely has Irish nomenclature to preserve in virtue of his geographical

purview. While Joyce preserves many of the features of the generic and literary tradition of the medieval dindsenchas^[*] in his attention to geography and topography in Ulysses, thus acting as senchaid for his age, he is at the same time responsive to the calls of the nationalists for localism in literature.

The Relationship of History and Literature

In the article of 24 November 1900 quoted above, Rooney distinguishes between geography and topography, noting the importance of local history to the latter. The interest in the role of history in literature is a topic found elsewhere in the popular press. O'Grady's All Ireland Review has some of the most illuminating material related to both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake on this subject, for in a series of articles in 1901 O'Grady stresses the interrelation of history and myth. On 9 February 1901, in an article that was part of a series entitled "Pre-Historic Ireland," O'Grady makes a telling argument that one must understand myth in order to comprehend the history and character of a people:

An escape from the actual is supplied to some more favoured or more gifted nations in the possession of a great mythical age lying behind their progress through time, imparting to their lives its own greatness and glory, inspiring life and hope and a buoyancy which laughs at obstacles and will not recognise defeat. . . .

To the Greek bards who shaped the mythology of Hellas we must remotely attribute all the enormous influence which Greece has exercised on the world. But for them the Greece that we know would not have been; without them the Iliad and Odyssey would never have arisen, nor the Athenian drama, nor Greek art, nor architecture. All of these, as we find them, are concerned with the gods and heroes who were the creation of pre-historic bards. . . .

As compared with the history of Greece, that of our own land is, of course, a small thing, its real greatness lying in the promise of the future, not in the actualities of the past; of which future that far off mythic age is a prophecy. But no more than Grecian is Irish History comprehensible without a knowledge of those Gods, giants, and heroes, with whose crowded cycles prehistoric pages are filled.

O'Grady's position is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot's view that Joyce's mythic method gives structure and stature to modern life, and it is interesting that O'Grady sees the Irish mythic age as prophetic of the future, a view

that is compatible with Joyce's use of material from The Book of Invasions on the eve of Irish statehood.

On 2 March 1901, in a later article in the same series, O'Grady goes on to discuss the merger of history and literature, views that are obviously related to Joyce's historical impetus in both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as well as his mythic structuring of the two works:

I think Ireland alone among the nations of the world exhibits as to its history, the same progress from the mythological and heroic to the mundane, not even excepting that of Greece, which comes next. In the history of Greece, there occurs between the two regions an era of mere barren names which indicate that here is debateable and uncertain land. On one side is the purple light of imagination, amid which loom and glitter the heroes and the gods—a land illuminated by the mind of Hesiod and Homer and the great tragedians; on the other the clear dry light of history prevails. We see clearly that one is history and the other fiction. But in the progress of the Irish national record the purple light is never absent. The weird, the supernatural, the heroic, surround characters as certain as Brian Borom—events as trustworthy as the Norman Invasion. The bards never relinquished their right to view their history with the eyes of poets, to convert their kings into heroes and adorn battles and events with hues drawn from mythology.

O'Grady could here be describing the merger of the supernatural and the heroic with the mundane and the everyday that so characterizes Joyce's major works; and insofar as Joyce was conscious of writing in a tradition, he may have viewed himself as appropriating the prerogatives of the Irish poets that O'Grady describes. It is interesting that in a letter to the editor printed in the 16 March 1901 issue of the All Ireland Review, an unnamed correspondent writes: "I am very glad to see that notwithstanding many intimations which would discourage a less resolute man you are going to deal with the mythology no less than the written and actual history of our race. History itself is daily and hourly approaching the inevitable period when it too will be mythical." Such a Joycean statement from an anonymous correspondent suggests that widespread cultural sentiments underlie Joyce's integration of fiction, history, and mythology.

Clearly the blending of myth and history that O'Grady delineates is related to the strand of pseudohistory in Irish literature and also to the historicization of mythic figures. O'Grady's most apt statement about this quality of Irish literature is found in his essay "Introduction of the Bardic History of Ireland":

There is not perhaps in existence a product of the human mind so extraordinary as the Irish annals. From a time dating for more than three thousand years before the birth of Christ, the stream of Hibernian history flows down uninterrupted, copious and abounding, between accurately defined banks. . . . As the centuries wend their way, king succeeds king with a regularity most gratifying, and fights no battle, marries no wife, begets not children, does no doughty deed of which a contemporaneous note was not taken, and which has not been incorporated in the annals of his country. To think that this mighty fabric of recorded events, so stupendous in its dimensions, so clean and accurate in its details, so symmetrical and elegant, should be after all a mirage and delusion. . . .

Doubtless the legendary blends at some point with the historic narrative. The cloud and mist somewhere condense into the clear stream of indubitable fact. But how to discern under the rich and teeming mythus [sic ] of the bards, the course of that slender and doubtful rivulet. . . . In this minute, circumstantial, and most imposing body of history, where the certain legend exhibits the form of plain and probable narrative, and the certain fact displays itself with a mythical flourish, how there to fix upon any one point and say here is the first truth. It is a task perilous and perplexing. (23–24)

The blending of history and myth, as well as the creation of a pseudo-history in Ulysses, recapitulates the narrative mode of early Irish literature and also fits in the context of the discourse of Joyce's contemporaries about the relations of history, literature, and myth.

The Role of Humor in an Irish Literature

In the popular Irish press of Joyce's youth, the question of humor is sensitive: because of the stigmatization associated with the Stage Irishman,^[38] there is widespread sensitivity in the periodicals about laughter at the expense of Irish subjects or subject matter, as well as frequent denunciations of portrayals of the Stage Irishman. This stereotyping of the Irish had contributed to the political and cultural oppression of the nation; thus, for the Republican movement and the movement of cultural nationalism the entire question of humor was a prickly issue. In some periodicals, notably the United Irishman, a counterreaction set in, and the overwhelming burden

[38] See Duggan, particularly 279–96; Hunt 3–5; Waters, esp. 1–57; Cave; and Kiberd, "Fall of the Stage Irishman."

of the editorial policy was to demonstrate that the Irish were serious, heroic, and noble (e.g., United Irishman 4 Mar. 1899, 11 Mar. 1899, 18 Mar. 1899, 12 Apr. 1902; Sinn Féin 19 Jan. 1907, 4 May 1907). Such a viewpoint was in part fueled by Matthew Arnold's delineation of "Celtic melancholy" as an important "racial" trait.

At the same time other views were more receptive to humor. We have seen above that in 1904 the Leader called for a portrait of the Celt as a man "that we can laugh with rather oftener than at ."In an earlier article of 1 March 1902 entitled "The Comic Irishman," after deploring the image of the Irishman as fool and menial both at home and abroad, O'Grady's periodical continues:

The revolution in Irish thought caused by the Irish Revival has given the Irish mind an earnest and dignified tone, and has given the country a basis for the growth of a healthy and intellectual school of humour.

There is, perhaps, nothing that this country needs more than the free play of real humour. The "humour" that we have been accustomed to, labelled "Irish humour," was lacking in thought, the basis of all true humour.

Joyce's interest in humor thus has a broader cultural context. In his desire to revive Elizabethan gaiety (JJ 2 150), in his own estimation of the importance of the humor of Ulysses, Joyce participated in a dialectic of Irish nationalism that was debated hotly in the press at the turn of the century. Joyce's choice of a nativist epic style that mixes the heroic and the humorous is thus a formal correlate to a position in an ideological debate that preoccupied Irish cultural nationalists year after year.

The Question of a National Literature

The main agenda of the Irish literary revival was the development of a national literature, but that said, there was a good deal less unanimity about what a national literature would consist of. The May 1904 issue of Dana summarizes some of the problems:

Of the various forms which patriotic ambition takes in the minds of Irishmen at the present time, perhaps the most generally favoured and the least impracticable, is a zeal for the promotion of a national literature. . . .

Since the days of the worthy Thomas Davis, who made a great, a noble, and an epoch-making effort to turn the national spirit in the direction of literature, Irish literary enterprise has concerned itself mainly with the aim of

securing the nationality of Irish literature by the choice of Irish subjects, the revival of the Irish language, and so forth.

The essay continues that the movement has failed to secure "the elemental freedom of the human mind which is really the essential of all independent and therefore national literature"; this freedom has "hardly made its appearance in the Irish literary movement" because of a fashion of promoting an artificial and sentimental unity of Irish life by ignoring matters on which the Irish have held diverse opinions. The result, the article maintains, is a hollowness of Irish literature. The Leader (5 July 1902) had earlier criticized the Irish literary revival for, among other things, Augusta Gregory's sentimentalized view of CuChulainn and her use of a "half-way house English" reminiscent of the "broken English" of "Irish slavery" in Cuchulain of Muirthemne; Yeats is taken to task for his view that the volume was "the best book that has ever come out of Ireland." Such particular criticisms of individual figures are widespread.

In the 7 June 1902 issue of the Leader, Peter O'Leary had taken another tack, criticizing the use of English literary forms in an Irish literature. In "Irish Poetical Composition" he writes,

If you are a real poet, an Irish poet, born into the Irish language, there is one thing which you certainly will never do. You will never write in the shape of the English rhyming couplet, nor in the shape of English blank verse, nor in fact in any of the shapes in which English poetry is composed and written. . . .

. . .The very thing which the builders of an Irish literature have got to do at the very start is to put the English models completely out of sight. They must build their Irish literature as if there was no English literature in existence.

O'Leary here is primarily addressing the importation of English poetics into literature into Irish, but the points relate to the development of an Irish literature in English as well. For an advocate, like Joyce, of the use of English to create an Irish literature, the question of an Irish poetics would be raised by arguments such as those of O'Leary. I have taken the position that Joyce did in fact reject English models, building an innovative poetic in English that is based in part on Irish genres and literary conventions; the kinds of arguments regarding Irish poetics and an Irish literature found in the nationalist press at the turn of the century

indicate that Joyce built his literary program as a concomitant of a nationalist position.

Summary

These are but a few issues discussed in the popular press that can be related to Joyce's poetics in his major writings. A great deal remains to be done in contextualizing Joyce's thought in terms of Irish discourse. In his treatment of history and myth, his use of Irish content and symbols, his realistic decor of time and place, and his manipulation of humor and heroism, Joyce shows himself to be working out in a literary forum some of the ideological questions that were at the heart of the nationalist debate in the three decades prior to the appearance of Ulysses.

vi. Conversation and Oral Transfer of Information about Early Irish Literature

In all his narratives Joyce portrays the importance of conversation in Dublin, but he does so particularly in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, illustrating how information and attitudes were circulated among the intellectuals of Ireland and among the ordinary people as well. Material about Ireland's history, literature, and language became current in this manner; and in Ulysses Joyce gives a specific example of this sort of transfer when Haines explains to Mulligan the early Irish idea of the otherworld (10.1076–84). The book is full of other conversations and anecdotes about historical figures and patriotic history, indicating that such exchange was a commonplace; Bloom's stories about Parnell shared with Stephen stand as a convenient example (16.1480ff.). The conversation in "Cyclops" gives an idea of how allusions to Irish tales infiltrated Irish nationalist conversation at the period; a youth like Joyce growing up in the culture at the time either would have had to learn the repertory of materials upon which such conversation was based or would have remained a kind of cultural illiterate, something certainly alien to Joyce's nature. Finally, the library episode in Ulysses illustrates that the sorts of predispositions toward Irish tradition represented in the popular press were also discussed widely.

Joyce was particularly apt to have been influenced by the oral transfer

of material about Irish tradition, and the importance of oral culture, storytelling, and oral lore is signaled by the voice of the father as the primal memory of the boy-to-be-artist in A Portrait of the Artist. Joyce had a prodigious memory; even material to which he was exposed briefly in a conversational exchange could remain with him in a vivid manner. John Kelleher notes that in 1906 Joyce complained that Dublin was already growing hazy in his memory, and observes: "I doubt it ever really grew hazy. I doubt that his memory, particular and capacious as a bard's, ever relinquished anything once learned from books, from observation, or from his father whose knowledge of Dublin was as intimate and curious as his own" ("Irish History" 431). Joyce's ability to remember material presented to him orally stood him well during the years when he was virtually blind and could not read; we are indebted for much of his later work to his ability to compose without pencil and paper and to absorb material spoken to him. Thus, oral sources for Joyce's knowledge of Irish tradition cannot be ignored; at the same time, in the absence of a recorder, conversation is ephemeral by its very nature. Though Joyce at times acts as his own recorder and though we have accounts by others of conversations with Joyce, most of these transactions necessarily left no traces, and reconstruction of this level of Joyce's source material is inevitably conjectural.

The possibilities, moreover, are broad. In Joyce's childhood there were family members and friends, notably his father, who told him stories and instructed him in what it was to be Irish; but there were also schoolmasters and neighbors and priests speaking from the pulpit. In A Portrait of the Artist Stephen remembers being taken by his father to the ceremony in 1898 at which the cornerstone of a monument to Wolfe Tone was set by Maud Gonne and Yeats, among others; the speeches at this sort of public political event would also have been occasions on which the patriotic history of Ireland would have been transmitted orally to Joyce (PA 184; cf. MacBride 280–86). Later in his life, at University College, Joyce engaged in extensive conversational exchanges with his school friends, many of whom, like George Clancy, were involved in the activities sponsored by the cultural nationalists, supported the Gaelic League, attended cultural events and classes of various types, and adopted the "party line" as required (JJ 2 61ff.). And there was also Joyce's ubiquitous brother Stanislaus, himself devoted to conversation and argument and active in the same cultural milieu.

Joyce's teachers at University College must also be accounted as po-

tential oral sources. Though a complete inventory of the faculty is not necessary in this context, specific teachers should be noted.^[39] One of his English teachers at University College was Thomas Arnold, the brother of Matthew Arnold, whose essay "On the Study of Celtic Literature" was a milestone in the recognition of Celtic literature in the English-speaking world; and Édouard Cadic, his French professor, was a Breton. But more important members of the faculty were George Sigerson, who lectured and published materials on Irish poetry and poetics, and Edmund Hogan (editor of the placelore manual Onomasticon Godelicum ), who held the chair of Irish language, history, and archaeology (Gorman 56). Patrick Dinneen, later the compiler of the standard Irish-English dictionary, was professor of Irish (MBK 153; O Hehir vii). Eoin Mac Neill (the foremost Irish historian of his generation), Patrick Henry Pearse, and Douglas Hyde had all lectured on Irish topics at University College during the period Joyce was a student (Gorman 56). Joyce, persuaded by his friend Clancy to take Irish for some time, was also instructed in Irish by Pearse, whose classes would have contained more than grammar and who would have provoked conversation of a cultural and nationalist sort among the students (cf. JJ 2 61).^[40]

Members of the Anglo-Irish literary movement must also be numbered among Joyce's oral sources for Irish history and literature. A. E., Gregory, Yeats all had conversations with Joyce; it is inconceivable that their conversation at no time turned to Irish literature. In Ulysses when Stephen mentally acknowledges "A. E. I. O. U." (9.213), is there nothing but money that he owes to A. E.? As a source of this type John Millington Synge is probably a key figure since Synge had read and studied early Irish material extensively, even attending d'Arbois de Jubainville's Celtic literature classes in Paris (Greene and Stephens 72; cf. 64–65). Synge may have passed on important material orally to Joyce in the brief but intense period they spent together in Paris in March 1903;^[41] Joyce's acute mem-

[39] For a more complete discussion of the faculty in fields not related to Irish culture, see Gorman 54–56; JJ 2 58–60. Ellmann's omission of many of the faculty members in Irish history, language, and literature indicates the critical bias in Joyce studies.

[40] Cf. Hughes in Stephen Hero.

[41] I am grateful to Anthony Roche for the suggestion that Synge in particular may have been an important oral source for Joyce. Cf. Gorman (101), who says that Joyce and Synge met seven or eight times and that Synge's voluble talk was always of literature.

ory of Maurya's speeches in Riders to the Sea, which he gained from reading Synge's manuscript in March 1903 (JJ 2 124), suggests that this period was a particularly influential and stimulating one for him. Synge was aware of the differences between the early Irish originals and the processed versions promulgated by the Anglo-Irish revival, as his review of Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne makes clear:

For readers who take more than literary interest in these stories a word of warning may be needed. Lady Gregory has omitted certain barbarous features, such as the descriptions of the fury of Cuchulain, and, in consequence, some of her versions have a much less archaic aspect than the original texts. Students of mythology will read this book with interest, yet for their severer studies they must still turn to the works of German scholars, and others, who translate without hesitation all that has come down to us in the MSS. (Synge, "An Epic of Ulster" 370)

Possibly alerting Joyce to the way that the translators of the literary revival bowdlerized the medieval Irish texts, Synge may have been an influence on Joyce to read scholarly translations of the medieval texts or other scholarly treatments of the material, rather than rely solely on popularizations, but Synge may also have told Joyce orally of various elements in the Irish texts not found in any source texts that Joyce himself read. In conversations with Synge, Joyce may have received a fund of information about such elements as the humor and earthiness of Irish narrative, as well as its gappiness and inconsistencies. Synge was in a position to know and appreciate these things.

Just as in contemporary culture not everyone who "knows about" Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex has read Freud or even has read a written summary of Freud—it is not necessary to read about Freud because his work is in the air, and the ignorant are informed orally, in conversation, in classes and lectures, in jokes and repartee—so in Joyce's Dublin were Irish literature, history, and culture in the air. These topics were in fact privileged cultural material at the time, in part because cultural nationalism was a vehicle for the coalescence of the nationalist movement as a whole. Thus, the specific oral sources suggested here are really just indicative of the various conversational environments that Joyce was part of, environments that would have passed Irish cultural materials to him, varying in their shades of significance and detail but essentially converging on the main lines of Irish tradition.

vii. Conclusion

In certain respects recognition of the substratum from popular culture in Joyce's work has become one of the orthodoxies of Joyce criticism, and John Gross notes "Joyce's constant use of colloquial, mass-produced, and plebeian materials" (51).^[42] The popular element is reflected in the spoken word recorded by Joyce, which includes slang, shoptalk, and all sorts of idiomatic and everyday speech; and it is evident in the musical elements—particularly in lines from the ballads of'98, the pantomimes, and the music-hall songs—that fill the text. Popular journalistic elements are accompaniments to Bloom's profession, and there are elements from jokes, riddles, romantic novelettes, pornography, and familiar quotations. All the "miscellaneous cultural bric-a-brac that clutters up the life of urban man" finds its place in Ulysses, and popular culture becomes "the element in which most of his characters live and the medium through which they express their feelings" (Gross 53, 55). Gross argues that "much of the vitality of Ulysses is borrowed from the popular material which it half mocks" (55–56) and that in fact Joyce's interest in popular culture can be traced through much of his life. In this context it is all the more important to consider the way in which popular culture influenced Joyce's thinking about Irish history and literature.

The brief survey in this chapter illustrates the ways in which Joyce's knowledge of the early Irish literature used in shaping Ulysses was omnipresent in Irish popular culture early in the twentieth century. Stories and myths that Joyce became acquainted with in his school days were recycled in the works of the Anglo-Irish literary revival, discussed in the daily and weekly periodicals, and circulated or augmented in oral culture. Dispositions about Irish literature and Irish culture were likewise transmitted in these several ways, such that it is to the generalized field of Irish popular culture that much of Joyce's knowledge of early Irish literature must be attributed.^[43]The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel is a convenient example of the futility of trying to determine a single specific source

[42] See also, for example, Budgen, Making of "Ulysses," esp. 132.

[43] Kelleher, "Identifying the Irish Printed Sources," also has a useful discussion of the problems of tracking down Joyce's sources, and he touches on both the overdetermination of Joyce's sources and the importance of oral and popular culture.

for Joyce's knowledge of an Irish tale, a tale that in this case he used in the construction of "The Dead." Although Joyce may have read the edition and translation of the story that appeared in Revue celtique, he could as well have drawn his knowledge from Best's extensive summary in the United Irishman, from the retelling of the tale in Augusta Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne, or from the reprint of the translation of the tale serialized in the All Ireland Review. But his knowledge of the tale also depended on information in the school curriculum, as well as secondary literature such as d'Arbois de Jubainville's Irish Mythological Cycle, which was serialized in the United Irishman. The simple fact is that in most cases Joyce had no single source for his knowledge of elements of early Irish history and literature; he had multiple and overlapping sources, and the topics were part of his general knowledge.

The survey here indicates that some arguments about Joyce's use of Irish texts need revision. Both John Kelleher in "Irish History and Mythology in James Joyce's 'The Dead'" and Stanley Sultan in Eliot, Joyce, and Company (42–48) take the view that Joyce had read translations of his early Irish sources in extenso. Though he may have done, it is probably more realistic, in the absence of textual evidence to the contrary, to consider the United Irishman or similar popular texts as the primary source of his knowledge of, say, The Voyage of Mael Duin or The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel than to expect that he read full translations of the primary materials. At the same time the materials contained in the United Irishman and other popular periodicals indicate the surprising range of information about early Irish literature that was absorbed into the general and popular culture of English speakers in Ireland at the turn of the century and that provided mental furnishings at the time, at least for those like Joyce who took the trouble to read a nationalist periodical regularly. Minor and even arcane tales and traditions were circulated and discussed along with the major stories; the main lines of a patriotic history were defined and iterated; an aesthetics was defended; a cultural inheritance was acknowledged by Irish and English speakers alike. To have been party to these things, it was not necessary to have been a radical nationalist, to have taken an extremist view of Irish literature and culture, or to have enrolled in classes on the topic; one needed only to have read popular newspapers and periodicals, of which the United Irishman is but a single, though rich, example.

As noted early in this book, the structures from early Irish literature

in Joyce's work are pervasive and fundamental, but they are not necessarily elaborated in a detailed way. The combination of the broad inclusion of Irish literature in popular culture and Joyce's relatively skeletal and allusive use of the same materials is suggestive. If we conclude that Joyce's sources were in the first instance popular ones, of which the United Irishman is a prototypical example for which we can document Joyce's knowledge, we better understand why Joyce's use of Irish materials shows a comprehensive but relatively schematic pattern rather than the more particularized but perhaps deeper use of texts that one might find if he had read the tales primarily in full translations. Although additional research in the topic is necessary, we may ultimately determine that in most cases such sources as the popular essays in the United Irishman and knowledge that was part of the cultural background of nationalists in Ireland provided sufficient imaginative stimulus for Joyce to have used early Irish literature and culture as he did in his work and that, in short, there is no necessity to determine specific source texts for most of the Irish literary elements in Joyce's works. For Joyce to have known of these materials and to have incorporated them in his mythic method, it sufficed for him to have been raised and educated in Ireland, to have been immersed in Irish popular culture, to have been aware of contemporary Irish speeches and intellectual life, to have participated in Irish discourse, to have read the Irish papers. At the same time, while Joyce may often have relied on popular journalism and general cultural background for his Irish literary materials, we cannot therefore dismiss his acquaintance with Irish culture as insignificant or trivial, something to be ignored in our consideration of his works. The example of Joyce's relation to Irish popular culture serves as a reminder of the necessity of establishing the popular cultural background of writers who emerge from marginalized cultures, including cultures resulting from the assimilation of another linguistic tradition or marginalized colonial and postcolonial cultures like that of Ireland. The use of the United Irishman as an index to Joyce's popular cultural background offers a methodological model for such investigations.

Joyce's interest in Irish literature and Irish culture is manifest not only in the mythic contents of his works but in the manipulation of those contents, in his narrative mode, and in his poetics; these various features of his work can be related to aspects of the discourse about Irish cultural nationalism in the periodical literature and in general intellectual life in

Ireland at the turn of the century. Joyce was neither a Hyde, able to write a literary history of Ireland, nor a Lady Gregory, able to collect folklore in Irish or translate and systematically retell much of the early Irish literary corpus; nevertheless, far from being lukewarm to Irish literature and the Irish renaissance, Joyce found congenial the journal most sympathetic to the Irish cultural revival in both its artistic and political reflexes. By his choice of the United Irishman as regular reading and his estimation of it as the best of the lot Ireland had to offer, Joyce was among the most concerned and best educated on the topic of early Irish history and literature among his contemporaries, leaving aside those who were specialists. Accordingly, he must be repositioned with respect to the other writers of the Anglo-Irish literary revival; his criticisms of the authors of that movement emerge from a context of his own interest in, knowledge of, and commitment to Irish literary, historical, and political questions, from an informed position that went beyond the common knowledge of his time.