Swift, Joyce, and the Flight From Home : Quests of Transcendence and the Sin of Separation

In a fresh reading of Gulliver's Travels and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Atkins draws parallels between the protagonists: both Lemuel Gulliver and Stephen Dedalus flee from the burdens of life, seeking a transcendent existence. The study sheds important new light on both novels as essential critiques of modern misunderstandings. Annotation Consisting of six essayistic chapters, this book centers on two seminal yet not often associated Irish texts: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916). Practicing a comparative way of reading indebted to T.S. Eliot, Atkins traces the patterns of response the protagonists of these works show in leaving home and separating themselves from family and friends. Both Lemuel Gulliver and Stephen Dedalus flee from the messy burdens of ordinary life, seeking a transcendent existence, which Gulliver finds in the Flying or Floating Island, Laputa, whereas Stephen in art. Atkins also shows how Swift and Joyce both stand opposed to their characters, joined in the understanding that an ordinary life and an extra-ordinary one are often inseparable. Thus, Gulliver's Travels and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can appear as essential critiques of modern misunderstandings Front Matter....Pages i-xii Satire, Reading, and Forms of Separation and Union....Pages 1-6 The Gift Half Understood....Pages 7-15 The Flight of Man, the Fall of Icarus and Phaeton....Pages 16-25 The Flying or Floating Island: Lemuel Gulliver and Ideas Disembodied....Pages 26-37 Aesthetics as Asceticism: Stephen Dedalus’s Quest of Transcendence....Pages 38-53 It’s All about Caring and Not-Caring at the Same Time: Or, Home Is Where You Start From....Pages 54-59 Back Matter....Pages 60-67