Bloom's Old Sweet Song
Essays on Joyce and Music
by Zack Bowen
Foreword by Bernard Benstock
Order
this Book now
James Joyce used music and musical allusion in ways that no other writer has attempted.
Ulysses alone contains more than 800 song references, many as dependent upon music as lyrics. In these retrospective essays, Zack Bowen, the leading expert on Joyce and music, describes this bond between music and Joyce's fiction, explaining how musical allusions inform both individual passages and the theme or structure of entire works.
The opening essay is a general statement on Joyce's use of music in the plot, structure, characterization, and thematic and stylistic development of his fiction, particularly
Ulysses. The second analyzes the way Joyce employs 158 references to 47 songs in the "Sirens" episode of
Ulysses. Other essays discuss broader ideas such as music and modernism, music as comedy, and music as ritual (exploring what Bowen calls "the Irish propensity to replace their religious rituals with drinking rituals"). Where necessary, Bowen uses actual lines of music to illustrate his points.
In a new essay for this volume, Bowen outlines his own musical background and the reasons for his lifelong pursuit of the subject of Joyce and music, and he assesses the place of Joyce's music in popular culture studies.
Zack Bowen is professor and chair of the English Department at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. He is the author of
A Readers Guide to John Barth, Ulysses as a Comic Novel, A Companion to Joyce Studies, Padraic Colum, Mary
Lavin, and Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry Through
Ulysses, a companion work to Bloom's Old Sweet Song. He is the producer-director of a series of dramatic recordings of chapters of
Ulysses, and a former editor of Irish Renaissance Annual.
The Florida James Joyce Series
1995. 163pp. 6 X 9. 11 music excerpts, notes, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1327-5 Cloth, $49.95s
Shopping
Cart Operations
For MasterCard/Visa
holders, accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart
and submit your order electronically.
Shopping Cart Operations
|
|
"Brilliant contextual criticism. . . . No one else in the field is so
knowledgeable."--Richard Fallis, Syracuse University
"Bowen's perspective on Ulysses is valuable not only because of his encyclopedic knowledge of songs, but also because of the knowledge of popular culture and Irish history that frames his
commentary."--Vicki Mahaffey, University of Pennsylvania
"A wealth of important information about Joyce's interaction with music. . . . [Bowen] is probably the international expert in this field, and he writes very
well."--Michael H. Begnal, Penn State University
|