Scandal Work

Margot Gayle Backus

Description

In Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars, Margot Gayle Backus charts the rise of the newspaper sex scandal across the fin de siècle British archipelago and explores its impact on the work of James Joyce, a towering figure of literary modernism.

Based largely on archival research, the first three chapters trace the legal, social, and economic forces that fueled an upsurge in sex scandal over the course of the Irish Home Rule debates during James Joyce’s childhood. The remaining chapters examine Joyce’s use of scandal in his work throughout his career, beginning with his earliest known poem, “Et Tu, Healy,” written when he was nine years old to express outrage over the politically disastrous Parnell scandal.

Backus’s readings of Joyce’s essays in a Trieste newspaper, the Dubliners short stories, Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses show Joyce’s increasingly intricate employment of scandal conventions, ingeniously twisted so as to disable scandal’s reifying effects. Scandal Work pursues a sequence of politically motivated sex scandals, which it derives from Joyce's work. It situates Joyce within an alternative history of the New Journalism’s emergence in response to the Irish Land Wars and the Home Rule debates, from the Phoenix Park murders and the first Dublin Castle scandal to “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” and the Oscar Wilde scandal. Her voluminous scholarship encompasses historical materials on Victorian and early twentieth-century sex scandals, Irish politics, and newspaper evolution as well as providing significant new readings of Joyce’s texts.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• 20th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Politics of Ireland
• Modern history
• New Journalism
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• General officer
• Ireland
• Irish
• English
• Stephen Ireland
• General
• European
• Welsh
• Scottish
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• James Joyce
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 21 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268158040
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SCANDAL WORK
JAMES JOYCE, THE NEW JOURNALISM, AND THE HOME RULE NEWSPAPER WARS
MARGOT GAYLE BACKUS
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2013 University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
All Rights Reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-268-07591-0
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] undpress.nd.edu Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Backus, Margot Gayle, 1961– Scandal work : James Joyce, the new journalism, and the home rule newspaper wars / Margot Gayle Backus. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-02237-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-268-02237-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Joyce, James, 1882–1941—Political and social views. 2. Sex scandals—Great Britain—History. 3. Home rule—Ireland. 4. Sensationalism in journalism—Great Britain. 5. English newspapers—Great Britain—History. I. Title. PR6019.O9Z5256515 2013 823'.912—dc23 2013022744 ∞ This book is printed on acid free paper. -->
For my fathers, Russell FitzGerald and Ron Kaake
The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
—Martin Luther King
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction. James Joyce and the Political Sex Scandal: “The Cracked Lookingglass of a Servant”
ONE . Unorthodox Methods in the Home Rule Newspaper Wars: Irish Nationalism, Phoenix Park, and the Fall of Parnell
TWO . Investigative, Fabricated, and Self-Incriminating Scandal Work: From “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” to the Oscar Wilde Trials
THREE . James Joyce’s Early Scandal Work: “Never Write about the Extraordinary”
FOUR . Reinventing the Scandal Fragment: “Smiling at Wild(e) Irish”
FIVE . The Protracted Labor of the New Journalist Sex Scandal: “Lodged in the Room of Infinite Possibilities”
SIX . James Joyce’s Self-Protective Self-Exposure: Confessing in a Foreign Language
SEVEN . (Re)Fusing Sentimentalism and Scandal: “Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich”
EIGHT . Dublin’s Tabloid Unconscious: “A Hairshirt of Purely Irish Manufacture”
Coda. Jamming the Imperial Circuitry: “The Readiest Channel Nowadays”
Notes
Bibliography Index -->
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure I.1: “The Irish Tempest.” Punch , March 19, 1870. Courtesy of Punch Limited.
Figure 1.1: The Royal Irish Constabulary pursue children distributing the United Ireland. United Ireland , February 18, 1882. © The British Library Board.
Figure 1.2: The Ghost of Myles Joyce points an accusatory finger at George Bolton. United Ireland , August 16, 1884. © The British Library Board.
Figure 1.3: A dapper Gladstone assaults an Egyptian with his umbrella. From The Gladstone ABC (by G. Stronach). © The British Library Board, shelfmark: 8139.bb.22.
Figure 1.4: Punch depicts the London Times covered in journalistic shame after the Piggott forgeries were exposed. March 9, 1889. Courtesy of Punch Limited.
Figure 1.5: Charles Stewart Parnell as “the Crowbar King.” Saint Stephen’s Review , December 27, 1890. © The British Library Board.
Figure 3.1: A man suffering from the paranoid delusion that Oscar Wilde is hiding in his bedroom plunges through his bedroom window. Illustrated Police News , April 27, 1895. © The British Library Board.
Figure 3.2: The Opening of the Sixth Seal , by Francis Danby, 1828. National Gallery of Ireland Collection. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was made possible by the generosity of many individuals, groups, and organizations, all of whom I want to first acknowledge and thank collectively, as the ordering of individual acknowledgments implies a hierarchy of gratitude that does not reflect my feelings. Thank you all. The vast web of information and ideas that is the Joyce-verse is the most exhilarating intellectual ocean I ever sought to navigate, and all those acknowledged helped me to keep my head above water and saw me safely to shore.
Of those whose influence on the overall project has been most materially and logistically pervasive, my professional editor, Jeanne Barker-Nunn, has been a star. It has been my good fortune to be coached, helped, pruned, and polished by Jeanne on and off for twenty years, since she copyedited my second published article in 1992, and her work has been invaluable. Sharon Delmendo, Betsy Dougherty, Sarah McKibben, Martha Stallman, and Skip Thompson—friends, colleagues, and intellectual family—lent support that included but also far exceeded reading and responding to chapters. Their engagement with my ideas and the conditions of their production has improved every page of this book and made its writing far less lonely. My editors at the University of Notre Dame Press, Barbara Hanrahan and subsequently Stephen Little, were both, in their distinct ways, magnificent, superlative, indispensable. Kevin Dettmar and Margot Norris, the press’s two external readers, supplied responses that deftly balanced praise and encouragement with essential, tactful, insightful, and readily applicable critique. Rebecca DeBoer, Beth Wright of Trio Bookworks, and indeed all those I worked with in the course of the book’s production have been like Bunyanesque literary inventions created to personify rare and desirable qualities: Competency, Respect, and Kindness.
I seem to have “caught” Ulysses from my students, rather than vice versa. The deep and fluent thinking in theses by my advisees Sara Leonard and Austin Westervelt-Lutz first got me hooked on the novel. Krista Kuhl, Martha Stallman, Lacy Johnson, Brandon Lamson, Matthew Walker, and Doyle Taverner-Ramos have produced similarly inspiring work. I have been vouchsafed new insights through the discussion and critical writing of literally dozens of University of Houston undergraduates and graduate students, in particular those who read Ulysses with me, and I sincerely thank them for all they have taught me. Martha Stallman in particular has been an extraordinarily valuable interlocutor, encountering and to an astounding degree absorbing Ulysses in one semester, then taking on a variety of roles including protégé, entertainer, unpaid and paid research assistant, coauthor, and friend. Her help reshaping these chapters as stories, her deep knowledge of Joyce, and her gift for intellectually apt, elegant, and often hilariously filthy summary resounds throughout the book. Gevais Jefferson, Meina Yates, and Krista Kuhl were all astonishing, joy-inducing students who all became, in varying orders, paid research assistants, conversants, and friends. Every teacher should be so lucky.
A cast of dozens read individual or multiple chapters, often more than once, and supported my work with intellectual guidance and encouragement, friendship, mentorship, reassurance, humor, and kindness. My colleagues at the University of Houston have been particularly generous. Hosam Aboul-Ela and Karen Fang, Maria Gonzalez, David Mazella, and Cedric Tolliver have helpfully responded to many chapter drafts; Hosam and Karen in particular read and responded to these chapters at every stage, starting with the primal ooze from which they evolved. My generous, far-flung Irish studies writing group—Helen Burke, Elizabeth Cullingford, Susan Cannon Harris, Sarah McKibben, Paige Reynolds, and Mary Trotter—has been equally indispensable, reading chapter drafts and all kinds of related pieces of work, cheering me on, and keeping me connected to the field I love. Paige and Sarah have been especially generous, providing astute last-minute readings at moments when it cannot have been convenient to do so. Karen Steele deserves recognition alongside these other long-haul colleagues; she has been a sort of one-woman writing group and emergency interlocutor who read and guided my work as I inelegantly bumbled about in the trackless wastes of newspaper studies. Mary Jean Corbett, Philip Sicker, and Eibhear Walshe also gave invaluable feedback to chapters of this book.
I must also thank those who have welcomed me into the world of Joyce studies with a degree of warmth and openheartednes for which I continue to be grateful. Joe Schork first taught me to interpret figurative language decades before I would need that skill to follow him in the adventure of disentangling Joyce’s endless figural webs. Joe Kelly introduced me to Joe Valente, Vicki Mahaffey, and Colleen Lamos—my first Joycean role models—while he and I were still in graduate school, and all have since become great friends. Joe Valente in particular has been unspeakably influential. Our joint work has shaped my thinking to a degree that cannot be accurately or adequately credited. His support for this project has been lavish; he has read numerous chapter drafts and supplied crucial feedback and guidance on little or no notice. I first read Ulysses for a seminar at the University of West Virginia taught by Declan Kiberd, and thus this book, like so many in Irish studies, owes a debt to this remarkable mentor, teacher, and scholar. Margot Norris has given me, in addition to an insightful reader’s report, the gift of her warmth and kindness. Katie Conrad, another academic sibling and soul sister, is an influential long-time collaborator and friend who presided over my physical entry into the world of Joyce studies at her lively Bloomsday centenary conference at the University of Kansas in June 2004. Michael Gillespie, Gregory Castle, Ann Fogarty, and Paul St. Amour have been valuable and generous colleagues, while Kevin Dettmar is in a class by himself as a teacher whose heart is matched only by his vast storehouses