The Self-Help Compulsion by Beth Blum

Author:Beth Blum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036060, History/United States/20th Century, LIT007000, Literary Criticism/Books & Reading
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES

Learning, perhaps, from Yeats’s library failure, and giving the lie to Martin Amis’s view of Ulysses as a “war against cliché,”88 Joyce strategically employs proverbial wisdom throughout his texts as an anchor for his more experimental, esoteric formulations. As a case in point, the simple proverb “let bygones be bygones” is woven throughout each of Joyce’s major works, first as the sentimental uttering of an Irish nationalist in Dubliners, then amid Bloom’s rumination upon the subjects of adultery and forgiveness in Ulysses. Finally, in Finnegans Wake, the bygones proverb goes viral, weaving throughout the minds of different characters, becoming part of the very texture of the book.

In one story from Dubliners, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” local supporters of the nationalist party gather around a fireplace in a dingy room, drinking and eulogizing Ireland’s past. Joyce uses cliché in Dubliners to ridicule the nationalists, who equate a history of exploitation, and the political and personal tragedy of Parnell, with something as trivial as “bygones.” The men discuss King Edward’s impending visit to Ireland:

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