![]() Joyce was in a medieval frame of mind when he began writing Finnegans Wake. ![]() Dante would have felt at home with this way of writing a book. You can see Joyce's medievalism in the way he structured Ulysses using colours, organs, symbols etc, as shown in the elaborate schema he produced for Stuart Gilbert and Carlo Linati. Stephen Gwynn's savage review in the Manchester Guardian summed it up as ' Seven hundred pages of a tome like a Blue-book are occupied with the events and sensations in one day of a renegade Jew' (Joyce never forgot or forgave a bad review). Ulysses had a blue cover and a Blue Book was an almanac, or compilation of statistics. Eccles is the street where Leopold Bloom lives in the book. Shem is also described as 'making believe to read his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles' (179.26), where Ulysses is identified with The Book of Kells. In Finnegans Wake, Shaun says of Shem the Penman (Joyce), ' He's weird, I tell you, and middayevil down to his vegetable soul.' (423.27) It's gleaming white now, but would have looked black in Joyce's day. I wonder if Joyce's 'black foliated church' was St Eustache in Les Halles (right). Joyce to Arthur Power, quoted in Conversations with James Joyce. I was always reminded of those medieval taverns in which the sacred and the obscene rub shoulders.' ![]() I know that when I used to frequent the pubs around Christ Church Interesting things about Ireland is that we are still a medieval people, and that Dublin is still a medievalĬity. Have been much more appreciated.And in my opinion one of the most Indeed, one of the most interesting things about present-day thought in my opinion is its return to medievalism.There is an old church I know of in Les Halles, a black foliated building with flying buttresses spread out like the legs of a spider, and as you walk past it you see the huge cobwebs hanging in its crevices, and more thanĪnything else I know of it reminds me of my own writings, so that Iįeel that if I had lived in the fourteenth or fifteenth century I should In comparison, classical buildings always seem to me to be over-simple and lacking in mystery. 'I remember once standing in the gardens beside Notre-Dame and looking up at its roofs, their amazing complication - plane overlapping plane, angle countering angle, the numerous traversing gutters and roundels. Though we think of Joyce as the most modern of the modernists, he told Arthur Power that he saw himself as writing in a medieval tradition: The book may have found its way to Kells following the Viking raids on Iona, when the surviving monks fled the island. He makes lots of appearances in Finnegans Wake. The first record of the book, in the eleventh century, calls it the 'great Gospel of Columkille.' Saint Columba, or Columkille, founded the monastery of Iona. The Book is named after Kells, in Ireland, but there is an old tradition linking it with the monastery of Iona. Its decoration is so rich and varied that it's like an encyclopedia of Insular styles. The Book of Kells, dating from around 800 CE, is one of the last great works of the tradition. Another great example, the Lindis farne Gospels, from around 700 CE, is displayed in the British Library. The earliest is the seventh century Book of Durrow, which is also in Trinity College. ![]() Scholars call these books 'Insular', because they were produced in islands off the west coast of the European continent. (2) Carpet Pages – pages of ornamentation typically placed at the beginning of each of the four Gospels in Gospel Books.The 'Carpet Page' from the Book of Durrow Studio Editions, Ltd., London, England, UK, 1993, pages 16-17. (1) Ben Mackworth-Praed, The Book of Kells, The delicate care with which the carpet pages (2) were created is a testament to the passion and devotion of the artist. To the Monks who created it, it was an homage to Christ and His message. The Book of Kells was intended to be more than just another manuscript of the Bible. Matthew is represented by this symbol due to the emphasis of Christ’s humanity in the Gospel according to Matthew. Luke is represented by this symbol due to the emphasis of Christ’s sacrifice in the Gospel according to Luke. John, the Evangelist soared into Heaven and was able to “gaze upon the light of immutable truth with keen and undazzled eyes.” John is represented by this symbol due to the belief that St. Mark is represented by this symbol due to the emphasis on Christ’s power and loyalty in the Gospel according to Mark. Artist unknown, 800 A.D., Carpet page of the Four Evangelists from the “Book of Kells.” ![]()
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