James Joyce: "Ulysses", "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (Icon Reader's Guides to Essential Criticism) Book

Described by Anthony Burgess as 'the most carefully written novel of the twentieth century', James Joyce's Ulysses stands at the very core of the modernist movement, and is universally hailed as a triumph of experimental writing. Joyce's development of the stream of consciousness technique and his intricate plays on meaning and language-function have permanently changed the ways in which novels are read and written. Always fascinating and frequently demanding, Joyce's work has provided a rich and rewarding source of literary debate for academics, critics and students. In this Readers' Guide, John Coyle brings together essays and extracts from some of the central secondary writings on Joyce's major novel. In addition to the treatment of Ulysses, the Guide also covers the critical responses to Joyce's earlier novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, exploring the relationship between the two works and examining some of the critical thinking on Joyce's techniques.