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Synopsis
Books about the work of James Joyce are an academic industry. Most of them are unreadable and esoteric. Adrian Hardiman's book is both highly readable and strikingly original.
He spent years researching Joyce's obsession with the legal system, and the myriad references to notorious trials in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Joyce was fascinated by and felt passionately about miscarriages of justice, and his view of the law was coloured by the potential for grave injustice when policemen and judges are given too much power. Hardiman recreates the colourful, dangerous world of the Edwardian courtrooms of Dublin and London, where the death penalty loomed over many trials.
He brings to life the eccentric barristers, corrupt police and omnipotent judges who made the law so entertaining and so horrifying. This is a remarkable evocation of a vanished world, though Joyce's scepticism about the way evidence is used in criminal trials is still highly relevant. New & Used
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What Reviewers Are Saying
Even to those who find Ulysses somewhat impenetrable and to those who never even attempt to read Finnegans Wake, Joyce in Court is a pleasure to read and a real treasury of Joycean history in context * Dublin Sunday Business Post * He has the gifts of clarity, expertise and a deep knowledge of what he is talking about... This book is a worthy tribute to a person of many talents who fortunately chose to devote a lot of them to a body of work which was ideally suited for him' * Irish Times * Hardiman has approached the oeuvre with refreshing clarity... he is a highly enlightened and consistently humane reader of Joyce' * Daily Telegraph * This tremendously well-researched and marvellously insightful book is a delight for lawyers and lovers of literature alike * Irish Independent * With forensic care, Hardiman takes us through the trials of Emmet and the invincibles. His advantage is that he knows the book as well as he knows the law, and so misses no chance to connect what happened legally with what enters the minds and conversations of the fictional characters... [Hardiman] writes with clarity and with a lawyer's eye as he describes what the authorities did to prevent the book being published' -- Colm Toibin, Guardian Hardiman's enthusiastic tracing and interpretation [...] does it a great service * The Sunday Times * Hardiman's detailed survey of [insurance law, libel, the tort of criminal conversation] undoubtedly renews and enriches our reading of Joyce's work as a whole... Its treatment of individual cases is fascinating' * Literary Review * The book reads like one of [Hardiman's] elaborate court arguments and it is redolent with the knowledge for which he was renowned. It is a seemly memorial of his professional life in the courts as well as his parallel life as historian and literary scholar * Irish Examiner * A fascinating exploration of Joyce's obsession with the legal system that looks at the many trials referenced in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake * Irish Times, Best books of 2017. * [Hardiman] sheds new light on James Joyce's Ulysses by way of the 18 civil cases referred to in its text... Provides an insightful consideration of Joyce's masterpiece from a refreshingly different angle' * Publishers Weekly. * Consistently informative and entertaining, and very often fascinating. It deserves a place in ever Irish lawyer's library * Law Society Gazette *