Reading Joyce's "Circe"

Book excerpt: This volume is the product of five years' work conducted by the London University Joyce Group on Circe, the longest chapter in Joyce's Ulysses . The essays explore specific, clearly defined themes: ventriloquy, stage directions, England, 'provection,' Circe as a meditation on the problem of totalization, the relationships between Circe and the Irish Literary Theatre, and between the early draft of Circe in V.A. 19 and the first edition text. But the volume also locates discussion within the framework of recent thought about the chapter. The primary features of current thinking on Circe would seem to be a certain scepticism with regard to totalizing accounts of the chapter; increasing attention to its aesthetic and discursive aspects, including the political aspects of its discursive practices; more concentrated reflection on the way in which Circe recycles material from other chapters in Ulysses ; and a growing emphasis on the need to think about the chapter in more plural terms. The essays included here build on such developments to provide an original contribution to recent debate over the aesthetics of Circe.