Publication of the week: Dr Brendan Fleming

Brendan Fleming, “The Leaving of Paris: Some Contrasts and Parallels between George Moore and James Joyce”, in George Moore’s Paris and His Ongoing French Connections, eds Michel Brunet, Fabienne Gaspari and Mary Pierse (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang, 2015), 57-70. ISBN: 978-3-0343-1973-7 pbk.

This essay argues that the significance of the Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) as an early modernist has been insufficiently recognised and that a reconsideration of the importance of Paris to his writings is a crucial aspect of Moore’s modernity. In 1929 George Moore and James Joyce met for the first time. Joyce acknowledged how indebted he was to Moore’s example and work, and emphasised the importance that Paris had for both of them. This essay explores the ways in which the city mediated and facilitated their literary careers and development. It argues that Paris is of particular significance to both of them for many reasons, but crucially it was the location and occasion of the publication of two of their key texts: the first French edition of Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man and Joyce’s Ulysses.

The essay considers the ways in which their subsequent critical reputations have been informed by this Parisian dimension. Of particular interest is the differing ways in which their respective responses to Parisian avant garde culture contributed to the wider emergence of modernist writing.

It is striking to observe the way in which, for both Moore and Joyce, their early periods in Paris were interrupted by a summons from Ireland compelling return. In Moore’s case that return was prompted by a restive tenantry on his Irish estate during the Irish Land War; in Joyce’s, his mother’s illness. The essay examines the differing ways in which these formative experiences of expatriation and return to Ireland were registered in their writings and were formative of their modernity.

More about the book on the Peter Lang website.

Dr Brendan Fleming is Lecturer in English Literature and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at The University of Buckingham. His research interests are Anglo-American Modernism, Irish Studies, and the history of book publishing. He is currently researching George Moore’s involvement with the Irish language movement in the context of the Irish Literary Revival.