Celebrating the Sacred in Ordinary Life

Tom Absher

Celebrating the Sacred
in Ordinary Life

James Joyce and the Renaissance Magus

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Absher, Tom, author

Title: Celebrating the sacred in ordinary life: James Joyce and the renaissance magus /

Tom Absher.

Description: New York: Peter Lang, [2017].

Series: Studies on themes & motifs in literature; Vol. 134 | ISSN 1056-3970

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017002889 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3979-6 (hardback: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4174-4 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4175-1 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4176-8 (mobi)

Subjects: LSCH: Joyce, James, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation.

Hermetism in literature.

Holy, The, in literature.

Classification: LCC PR6019.O9 Z5225 2017 | DDC 823/.912—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002889

DOI 10.3726/b10993

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

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All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
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About the author

Tom Absher received his Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught literature and creative writing in several small liberal arts colleges for forty years. His other published works include Men and the Goddess, as well as several collections of poetry.

About the book

This book is an introductory examination of the Hermetic tradition in the Renaissance and how James Joyce made use of certain of its salient features in his four works of fiction: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. This book makes a useful contribution to literary studies of Joyce’s work as well as introductory cultural studies of the Hermetic tradition, its philosophy and important figures, like Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction: “A Shout in the Street”

Chapter 1. Setting the Terms

Chapter 2. Background

Chapter 3. The Magus

Chapter 4. Dubliners

Chapter 5. Portrait

Chapter 6. Ulysses: Background Materials

Chapter 7. Ulysses: The Text

Chapter 8. Finnegans Wake

Index←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→

Acknowledgments

This book project has had many supporters over the years. In addition to my special and deepest thanks to my wife, Erika Butler, for helping me with every stage of this project, I want to thank some of the early readers of the manuscript. Stephen Long, Howard Norman, Jack Pulaski, David Rees, and Rhea Wilson each gave careful attention to the work and offered many useful suggestions.