Joyce and Militarism (Electronic book text)

Each of James Joyce's major works appeared in a year defined by armed conflict in Ireland or continental Europe: "Dubliners" in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War; "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in the same year as the 1916 Easter Rising; "Ulysses" in February 1922, two months after the Anglo-Irish Treaty and a few months before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War; and "Finnegans Wake" in 1939, as Joyce complained that the German army's westward advances upstaged the novel's release.

In "Joyce and Militarism," Greg Winston considers these masterworks in light of the longstanding shadows that military culture and ideology cast over the society in which the writer lived and wrote. The first book-length study of its kind, this articulate volume offers original and interesting insights into Joyce's response to the military presence in everything from education and athletics to prostitution and public space.