Teller and tale in Joyce's fiction

"Although bemused readers might claim that Finnegans Wake is totally unlike anything they've seen before, John Paul Riquelme argues that it is quite closely related to all the rest of Joyce's fiction--indeed, that it represents the ultimate elaboration of the styles, techniques, and concepts that appear throughout the author's work. Questioning conventional notions of chronological development, Riquelme looks backward from Finnegans Wake to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and Ulysses, in that order. He draws upon recent developments in literary theory concerning narrative style and reading to explore the relationship of the early works to later ones. Rather than follow traditional critics in their dismissal of Joyce's stylistic experiments as aberrations from a realistic norm, Teller and Tale arguest aht the changes over tiem in the author's expressive style indicate a protracted effort to overturn the conventions of realism in the novel. Particular attention is given to Joyce's use of the artist as character and narrator, his linking of ends to beginnings, his styles, and his attempts to present the source of writing. Teller and Tale in Joyce's Fiction traces a complex double movement in James Joyce's literary career as the writer sought to express both individual and collective consciousness in his work. By looking at Joyce's entire literary output, and at Finnegans Wake s its conclusion and epitome, Riquelme clarifies these narrative goals and helps us understand Joyce's struggle to bring them to the surface"--Book jacket.