Description: R. J. Schork examines the function of the countless saints -- genuine and bogus, famous and obscure, ancient and modern -- who hover over James Joyce's fiction. Apostolic zealots, mutilated virgins, Celtic wanderers, stigmatic friars, Counter-Reformation founders, a hairy hermit, and Little Nelly of Holy God make their way through these pages, as do more fictitious heroes and heroines like St. Pseudonymous, St. Jingo, and St. Notwithstanding. Schork identifies them, traces their inspiration in Joyce's Irish Catholic upbringing, establishes their context in the Catholic tradition, and explores the mostly humorous and irreverent roles they play in Joyce's work.

Making extensive use of the notebooks Joyce assembled while writing Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Schork is also a detective, identifying esoteric genetic sources and literary parallels for Joyce's hallowed messengers. A Jesuit-trained classics scholar, Schork is uniquely able to trace the considerable impact of Joyce's classical -- and ecclesiastical -- education on his work.

With humor and a sense of irreverence equal to Joyce's own, Schork weaves saintly biographies together with contextual explanations of the Catholic tradition -- its feast dates and pilgrimages as well as its early history, relics, rituals, and symbols -- illuminating otherwise obscure references and evoking the cultural and religious landscape Joyce inherited and manipulated to serve his art.

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