Joyce and Nationalism.

Terry Eagleton is usually a good read, and his LRB review (23 July 2026; archived) of Frank Callanan’s James Joyce: A Political Life has some interesting thoughts on Joyce’s relations with politics and modernism; he starts by explaining that Joyce, far from being indifferent to politics, was “a loyal disciple of Charles Stewart Parnell,” and continues: If it’s easy to mistake this haughty young recusant for a critic of nationalism, it’s largely because, with the Parnellites plunged into division and disarray over the fate of their leader, Joyce was now politically homeless. Parnell’s brand of nationalism had been civic rather than ethnic, political rather than cultural, constitutional rather than revolutionary and inclusive rather than sectarian (he was an Anglo-Irish Protestant). Joyce championed all these views, but found none of them adequately represented by the nationalist currents on offer after Parnell’s death. If Joyce’s politics were hard to decipher, it was partly because he…