Registration
Admission for this special program is free.
Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email rsvp@rosenbach.org.
This program is for those 18 and older.
Description
Part of James Joyce’s genius was his ability to find the poetry in everyday life. For Joyce, even a simple object like a table becomes magical: “a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment.” How might we learn to regain some of the child-like play with language and sense of delight in the ordinary that comes so naturally to Joyce?
The Joyce of Everyday Life teaches us how to interpret seemingly mundane objects and encounters with openness and active curiosity in order to attain greater self-understanding and a fuller appreciation of others. Through a close examination of Joyce's joyous, musical prose, this book demonstrates how language provides us with the means to revitalize daily experience and social interactions across a diverse and ever-changing world.
Acclaimed Joyce scholar Vicki Mahaffey demonstrates how Joyce’s writing might prompt us to engage in a different kind of reading, treating words and fiction as tools for expanding the boundaries of the self with humor and feeling. A book for everyone who loves language, The Joyce of Everyday Life is a lyrical romp through quotidian existence.
You can read an interview with Dr. Mahaffey, conducted by John C. Haas Director of the Rosenbach Kelsey Scouten Bates at our website here.
About the Instructor
Vicki Mahaffey’s new book is The Joyce of Everyday Life, published by Bucknell University Press. She is also the author of two other books related to James Joyce, as well as two edited collections and fifty articles. She received her PhD from Princeton University and taught at the University of Pennsylvania for almost thirty years. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the International James Joyce Foundation (currently serving her third term). While at Penn, she taught courses at the Rosenbach and was involved in the planning of the annual Bloomsday celebrations. (She is proudest of introducing musical performances, although she was also part of the team that chose the readings). She is currently the Kirkpatrick Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois. Recently, Dr. Mahaffey has led courses on Ulysses (2021-22), Yeats’s Poetry (2023), Finnegans Wake (2023-24), and Dubliners (2024) for the Rosenbach.