Suttree, Joyce, and Flaubert

A number of critics have noted the importance of intertextual references to Suttree with Scott. D. Yarbrough claiming it has “perhaps more intertextual references than any other of his works.” Critics such as Vereen Bell, Robert Jarrett, Rich Wallach, James Potts, John Rothfork, James Watson, and William C. Spencer have pointed out the connections to a range of texts from Auden, Cummings, Joyce, Frost, Faulkner, Walter Percy, and James Agee in literature to theological and philosophical traditions including the Christian tradition, the work of William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Buddhist and Native American traditions. The work is rich, then, with plays of association, and I will return to one that relates to James Joyce's Ulysses and the nighttown episode "Circe:' a work that Wallach has shown to be in dialogue with Suttree. In addition, I will turn to The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert, which has not previously been connected with Suttree, but which has been linked by critics ofJoyce to the Circe episode.