Resumen de The Space Between Fiction and Reality: Uncovering the Real Lizzie Twigg
Lizzie Twigg owes whatever claim to fame she has in literary history to James Joyce’s satiric send-up of her in Ulysses as a bluestocking, a suffragette, a theosophist, or some combination of all three. Born Eliza Ann Twigg in India just months before Joyce, she spent the majority of her life in Limerick. Twigg was an only child who never married, and her social and economic background was not distinguished. Despite these origins, she published numerous poems, including the book-length Song & Poems in 1904, which contains several points of comparison with Joyce’s 1907 Chamber Music collection. Unlike her much better-known countryman, Twigg’s poems were widely and well-reviewed. This essay asserts that there were multiple factors behind Joyce’s use and misuse of Twigg in his Irish epic. New historical and biographical information suggests multiple reasons behind Joyce’s characterization of Twigg in “Lestrygonians,” including her name, the origins of her birth, her struggles with the Irish language, her relationship with the Catholic Church, and even her large protuberant eyes.
