This is a comparative study focusing on Joyce as an Irish and European writer, best understood in the context of other times and writers, including Virginia Woolf."Joyce and Company" is a comparative study which encourages a way of thinking about Joyce not as an isolated figure but as someone who is best understood in the company of others whether from the past, the present or, indeed, the imagined future. Throughout, Pierce places Joyce and his time in dialogue with other figures or different historical periods or languages other than English. In this way, Joyce is seen anew in relation to other writers and contexts.The book is organised in four parts: Joyce and History, Joyce and Language, Joyce and the City, and Joyce and the Contemporary World. Pierce emphasises Joyce's position as both an Irish and a European writer and shows Joyce's continuing relevance to the twenty-first century, not least in his commitment to language, culture and a discourse on freedom.

Author Biography

David Pierce has taught, read, and written about modern literature and Irish writing for more than thirty years. He is on the Board of the International James Joyce Foundation, is reviews editor for estudiosirlandeses.org, an internet journal devoted to Irish Studies, and the author of W.B. Yeats State of the Art (Bristol Classical Press,1989); James Joyce's Ireland (Yale University Press, 1992); Yeats's Worlds: Ireland, England and the Poetic Imagination (Yale University Press, 1995); W.B. Yeats Critical Assessments 4 vols (Helm Information, 2000); Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Cork University Press, 2001); Light, Freedom and Song: A Cultural History of Modern Irish Writing (Yale University Press, 2005); and Reading Joyce (Longman, 2008). He is co-author with Mary Eagleton of Attitudes to Class in the English Novel (Thames and Hudson, 1979), and co-editor with Peter de Voogd of Laurence Sterne in Modernism and Postmodernism (Rodopi, 1996). Now retired, David lives in York, UK.