Journey Westward: Joyce, "Dubliners" and the Literary Revival

Journey Westward: Joyce, and the Literary Revival by Frank Shovlin. Liverpool U. Press, 2012. Pp. ix + 180. $99.95. James is inextricably linked with Dublin. Born and raised in the east-coast Irish metropolis and capital city, famously set all of his fictions there. appearance of a monograph on and Western Ireland may therefore come as a surprise, yet is precisely Frank Shovlin, the author also of an excellent study on twentieth-century Irish literary periodicals, has written. Gaelic-speaking west of Ireland is of course important to and other Irish authors as more than a geographical space; connotes the essential, primitive, uncorrupted of Ireland--in Shovlin's words, the Revivalists' Utopia (3). Focusing on Dubliners and, in particular, on that volume's closing masterpiece, The Dead, Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival--steeped in Irish political and cultural and possessing a keen eye and ear for linguistic detail and allusive nuance--makes the case for considering as a writer absorbed with what lay beyond the Shannon, for rather more historically grounded, and sometimes more personal, reasons than those romantic, mythological considerations so close to Yeats's heart (3). Journey Westward is divided into three long chapters, each of which takes a different central theme or trope to help build towards a broader reconsideration of to his homeland (3). Collectively, the three chapters explore sense of estrangement from the systems of power prevalent in Ireland, in particular the British Empire, which manifested itself in Ireland via the Protestant ascendancy (159-60). Chapter One treats the various ways in which critiques Protestant power in Ireland via a subtle series of prompts towards distillation and the production of (3). To be sure, Dubliners is suffused with references to whisky and distilleries, the first of which appears early on in the collection's opening story, The Sisters, and the last of which figures in the volume's closing masterpiece, The Dead. Shovlin notes familiarity with the well-known analogy between distillation and creative writing both involve a process of purifying and refining something (spirit or language) but argues that is far more interested in the and biographical significance of (15). father, John, had a financial interest in and for a time was secretary of the Dublin and Chapelizod Distillery; when that distillery failed, John realized significant losses. Moreover, whiskey and its production in Ireland at the time were associated with England, with the landlord caste and with imperial domination generally (52). Given this view of whiskey, along with the Joyce family's own misfortunes in the failed distillery at Chapelizod, Shovlin writes, it is not surprising that blends the spirit into the mix of Dubliners as a consistently negative omen (52). Chapter 2 concerns engagement with the seismic historical shift brought about by the fall of Irish Jacobitism in 1691 (4). Joyce's interest in the lost cause of Jacobitism has been passed over by critics and general readers alike, Shovlin maintains; such failure to recognize a consistent strain in his work leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of attitude to Irish nationalism and his engagement with Irish and historiography (63). chapter's many interlocking arguments sensitize readers to interest in the lost Stuart cause, in particular as this interest is manifested, however obliquely, in The Sisters, After the Race, and The Dead. Shovlin's discussion of surreptitious treatment of the historical phenomenon of the Wild Geese in The Dead is particularly convincing. Chapter 3 explores attitudes to both the Literary Revival and to Ireland's tragic [colonial] history (4). …