Joyce and the Law
Joyce and the Law
Making the case that legal issues are central to James Joyce’s life and work, international experts in law and literature offer new insights into Joyce’s most important texts. They analyze Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Giacomo Joyce, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake in light of the legal contexts of Joyce’s day.
Topics include marriage laws, the Aliens Act of 1905, laws governing display and use of language, minority rights debates, municipal self-government, rentier culture, and regulations on alcohol consumption and licensing. This volume also highlights Joyce’s own fascination with law and legal inquiry and explores how, by adopting a unique visual and linguistic style, Joyce constructed an authorial identity that mirrored the process of trademark. It also offers a deeper understanding of Judge John Woolsey’s decision in the Ulysses obscenity case and reveals the many ways copyright has affected publication of Joyce’s work and the scholarly and aesthetic use of his words. These discussions show how reading Joyce alongside the law enriches both legal studies and literary scholarship.
Contributors: Janine Utell | Carey Mickalites | Steven Morrison | Tekla Mecsnober | Richard Cole | Celia Marshik | Andrew Gibson | Robert Brazeu | Adrian Hardiman | Anne Marie D’Arcy | Terence Killeen | Jonathan Goldman | Joseph Hassett | Kevin Birmingham | Robert Spoo | Amanda Golden
Brilliantly demonstrates how law and literature intermingle in Joyce’s trajectory but also transcend the case study, opening the door to a new take on high modernist fiction.’—Forum for Modern Language Studies ‘The essays of Joyce and the Law expand our understanding of the social milieu that Joyce manifested in his works. . . . [They] continue to reveal just how astute Joyce was as a reader of his world.’—Irish Studies Review
A capacious, generative, and important collection with far-ranging implications for Joyce studies and for our understanding of literature’s relationship to law.'—Ravit Reichman, author of The Affective Life of Law: Legal Modernism and the Literary Imagination 'Draws together an international cohort of Joyce scholars with specialist knowledge in legal considerations shaping events and characters’ motivations in Joyce’s writing.'—Margot Gayle Backus, author of Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars 'Gives us a new map of the busy intersection of Joyce and law. This volume’s contributors rise to the challenge, taking on everything from laws of marriage, immigration, and finance to regimes of intellectual property, libel, and obscenity.'—Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form
Jonathan Goldman, professor of English at New York Institute of Technology, is the author of Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity and coeditor of Modernist Star Maps: Celebrity, Modernity, Culture.
Contents Foreword vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: James Joyce and the Law 1 Jonathan Goldman Part I. Legal Lives of Joyce’s Characters 1. Criminal Conversation: Marriage, Adultery, and the Law in Joyce’s Work 15 Janine Utell 2. Joyce and British Finance Law: Adrift on the Waters of International Investment 31 Carey Mickalites 3. Joyce, the Aliens Act, and Immigration 47 Steven Morrison Part II. Legal Regimes of Joyce’s Spaces and Places 4. National Languages and Neutral Idioms: Joyce among the Language Laws 63 Tekla Mecsnober 5. Rights and Losses: The Ends of Minority Recognition in Joyce and International Law 84 Rich Cole 6. Dublin Inc.: Municipal Corporation Reform in “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” 105 Celia Marshik 7. “Nobody Owns”: Ulysses, Tenancy, and Property Law 122 Andrew Gibson 8. Pro Bono Publico: Urban Space in “Cyclops” 135 Robert Brazeau Part III. Joyce’s Legal Languages and Sources 9. “Eating orangepeels in the park”: Largesse, Libel, and Public Action in Ulysses 157 Anne Marie D’Arcy 10. The Law in/of Finnegans Wake: A Starchamber Quiry 179 Terence Killeen 11. The Logos of Trademark: Joyce, Bass Ale, and Brand Insignias 193 Jonathan Goldman Part IV. Circulation and Its Legalities 12. Literature Meets Law in Court: The Trials of Ulysses 213 Joseph M. Hassett 13. The Prestige of the Law: Revisiting Obscenity Law and Judge Woolsey’s Ulysses Decision 228 Kevin Birmingham 14. Ulysses as Deodand: Books, Automobiles, and the Law of Forfeiture 246 Robert Spoo 15. The Past and Future of Joycean Copyright 262 Amanda Golden List of Contributors 277 Index 279
