Two scholars present James Joyce's work to emphasize not only his humanity but the humour underlying it. Joyce had a continuous and successful struggle to discover a language that could convey laughter and music, images and ideas. He looked back at his own past, and that of oral and literary traditions. Drawing on key passages from "Dubliners" to "Finnegans Wake", from the "Pomes Penyeach" and the letters, this book shows the wide diversity of a wordsmith at his best. A.Norman Jeffares has written extensively on Irish literature and is an authority on W.B. Yeats. Brendan Kennelly is the author of "Cromwell" and "The Book of Judas".