Book Launch

18 May 2023, 6:00pm

On Thursday, 18 May 2023 at 6:00pm, the James Joyce Centre hosted the book launch of James Joyce and the Irish Revolution: The Easter Rising as Modern Event by Luke Gibbons. The evening was introduced by Professor Emer Nolan of Maynooth University.

Published by The University of Chicago Press, James Joyce and the Irish Revolution is a provocative history of Ulysses and the Easter Rising as harbingers of decolonization.

When revolutionaries seized Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising, they looked back to unrequited pasts to point the way toward radical futures—transforming the Celtic Twilight into the electric light of modern Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. For Luke Gibbons, the short-lived rebellion converted the Irish Renaissance into the beginning of a global decolonial movement.

James Joyce and the Irish Revolution maps connections between modernists and radicals, tracing not only Joyce’s projection of Ireland onto the world stage but also how revolutionary leaders like Ernie O’Malley turned to Ulysses to make sense of their shattered worlds.

Coinciding with the centenary of both Ulysses and Irish independence, this book challenges received narratives about the rebellion and the novel that left Ireland changed, changed utterly.

Luke Gibbons has taught as Professor of Irish Studies at Maynooth University and the University of Notre Dame and has published widely on Irish culture and criticism.