Abstract
This chapter argues that the question of Giacomo’s non-fictionality hinges on its confessional structure, and the extent to which its rhetoric may be compared with the many instances of confession in Joyce’s fiction. The dramatic, self-reflexive, and regulatory structures of Giacomo invite analysis within a long tradition of confessional literature—one in which sexuality and figurations of power are inextricable—from Augustine and Rousseau, up through the confessionalist poetry that was at its height when Giacomo was finally published in 1968. Rather than regard the context of this latter movement as historical coincidence, confessional poetry’s discursive strategies of self-making provide a useful framework for evaluating the non-fictional claims of Giacomo’s sixteen-page outpouring.
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- 1.
Louis Armand, “Introduction: Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on the Other Joyce,” Giacomo Joyce: Envoys of the Other (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006), 6.
- 2.
Richard Ellmann, “Introduction,” Giacomo Joyce, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber, 1968), xii.
- 3.
Robert M. Adams and Robert Scholes, “A Very Pretty Piece of Protocol, Mr. Ellmann,” James Joyce Quarterly 5.3 (Spring, 1968), 230.
- 4.
Ibid., 231.
- 5.
Sverre Lynstad, “Giacomo Joyce by James Joyce; Richard Ellman,” Books Abroad 42.3 (Summer, 1968), 144.
- 6.
J. Mitchell Morse, “By and about Joyce” review, The Hudson Review 21.2 (Summer, 1968), 389.
- 7.
Armand, 1.
- 8.
Armand, viii.
- 9.
Ellmann , xxv.
- 10.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978), 159.
- 11.
Foucault , 23.
- 12.
Mary Lowe-Evans, “Sex and Confession in the Joyce Canon: Some Historical Parallels,” Journal of Modern Literature 4 (Spring, 1990), 568.
- 13.
Wolfgang Streit, Joyce/Foucault: Sexual Confessions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 158.
- 14.
Foucault , 19.
- 15.
Hélène Cixous, “Giacomo Joyce: The Ironic Sobs of Eros,” Envoys of the Other, 317.
- 16.
Anthony Burgess, “Portrait of the Artist in Middle Age,” The Nation (March 4, 1968), 309.
- 17.
Nancy Vickers, “Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme,” Critical Inquiry 8 (1982), 272.
- 18.
Adams and Scholes, 229 (231).
- 19.
Mitchell Morse, 389.
- 20.
Henry Raymont, “MS. of a Joyce Autobiographical Love Story Found; MS. of Joyce Tale Uncovered Here,” The New York Times (28 August 1967), 1.
- 21.
Qtd. in Steven Gould Axelrod, “Introduction,” The Critical Response to Robert Lowell, ed. Steven Gould Axelrod (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 2.
- 22.
Frank Bidart, “Introduction: “You Didn’t Write, You Rewrote”,” Collected Poems ( Robert Lowell), ed. Bidart and David Gewanter (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2003), xvi.
- 23.
Vereen M. Bell, Robert Lowell: Nihilist as Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 188.
- 24.
Adam Kirsch, The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets (New York: Norton, 2005), 43.
- 25.
John Berryman, Collected Poems: 1937–1971, ed. Charles Thornbury (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1989), 303.
- 26.
Robert Mazzocco, “Harlequin in Hell,” New York Review of Books (29 June 1967).
- 27.
Fritz Senn, “On Not Coming to Terms with Giacomo Joyce,” Envoys of the Other, 24.
- 28.
Hayden Carruth, “Declining Occasions,” Poetry (Chicago), 112.2 (May 1968), 119.
- 29.
Berryman , Collected Poems, 70.
- 30.
Berryman , Collected Poems, 126.
- 31.
Berryman , Collected Poems, 117.
- 32.
Berryman , “Author’s Note,” Dream Songs (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2014), xx.
- 33.
Peter A. Stitt, “John Berryman, The Art of Poetry, No. 16,” Paris Review, issue 53 (Winter 1972).
- 34.
Ellmann , xii.
- 35.
Joel Conarroe, John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 94.
- 36.
Denis Donoghue, “Berryman’s Long Dream,” Art International xiii.80 (20 March, 1969), 63.
- 37.
Ellmann , xii.
- 38.
Christopher Benfey, “The Genius and Excess of John Berryman,” The Atlantic (March 2015).
- 39.
Adrienne Rich, “Carydid: A Column,” American Poetry Review (Sept–Oct 1973), reprinted in Steven Gould Axelrod, Critical Response to Robert Lowell, 186.
- 40.
Michel Delville, “Epiphanies and Prose Lyrics: James Joyce and the Poetics of the Fragment,” Envoys of the Other, 110.
- 41.
Stitt interview, Paris Review (1972).
- 42.
Berryman, Collected Poems, 70.
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Welsch, J.T. (2018). “… For frankness’ sake”: Confessional Structures in Giacomo Joyce . In: Ebury, K., Fraser, J. (eds) Joyce’s Non-Fiction Writings. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72242-9_10
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