James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality

Postcritical and Postsecular Reading in Dubliners and Ulysses

Richard Rankin Russell, Professor of English

James Joyce and Samaritan Hospitality reads Dubliners and Ulysses through studies of hospitality, particularly that articulated in the Lukan parable of the Good Samaritan. It traces the origins of the novel in part to the physical attacks on Joyce in 1904 Dublin and 1907 Rome, showing how these incidents and the parable were incorporated into his short story "Grace" and throughout Ulysses, especially its last four episodes. Richard Rankin Russell discusses the rich theory of hospitality developed by Joyce and demonstrates that he sought to make us more charitable readers through his explorations and depictions of Samaritan hospitality.

Edinburgh University Press, 2022

ISBN 9781474499002

"While Joyce scholars have long recognized that the theme of hospitality permeates his work, Richard Russell is the first to read both Dubliners and Ulysses through the lens of what he calls the 'greatest of all parables.' His argument is crisp, lucid and thoroughly readable." —James A. W. Heffernan, Dartmouth College, author of Hospitality and Treachery in Western Literature