Matthew Hayward | The University of the South Pacific (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Matthew Hayward

Directions: Journal of Education Studies, 2021

The motif on the cover is based on a nineteenth century carving of a ship's prow from Choiseul, S... more The motif on the cover is based on a nineteenth century carving of a ship's prow from Choiseul, Solomon Islands. To Directions: Journal of Education Studies, it signifies forward movement.

Modernism/modernity, 28.2, 2021

For so long figured in European discourses as the very antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islan... more For so long figured in European discourses as the very antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist map. Yet as “Towards an Oceanian Modernism” shows, Pacific artists and writers have been actively engaged in the construction and representation of their modernity. Closely aligned to the newly gained political independence of many Pacific Islands nations, and involved with Indigenous rights movements in others, Pacific writers rejected the old adventure-yarn clichés of tropical paradises and cannibal isles, and worked to forge a literature of Oceania—not as a testing ground for Western desires and anxieties, but as a modern home and a place requiring its own creative self-reflection and refashioning. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of influences—from Victorian literary realism to Hollywood film, African modernisms to Indian mythology—Oceanian writers forged new modes that express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities.

Tracing the acts of adaptation, indigenization and appropriation that characterize this literature, “Towards an Oceanian Modernism” in the first place challenges the exclusion of a sizeable quarter of the globe from the new modernist studies. Despite the radical revisions to modernist borders in recent decades, the persistent critical blindness to Indigenous modernisms suggests that the discipline is still haunted by hierarchies of origins and derivations—hierarchies that Oceanian literature from an early stage sought to undermine. However, the article also reflects upon what is at stake in bringing the global modernist rubric to bear on Oceania. Acknowledging the power imbalance of contemporary scholarly discourse, it resolves upon a modernist mapping of transnational thought and movement that works no longer in terms of the stability and power of continents, but, most appropriately for the Pacific, in terms of archipelagos—a sea of islands in which modernisms and modernities relate to each other in multiple, shifting ways.

Modernist Cultures, 2020

This article examines the ways in which the Fijian authors Vanessa Griffen, Pio Manoa, and Subram... more This article examines the ways in which the Fijian authors Vanessa Griffen, Pio Manoa, and Subramani revised and reworked modernist texts in their construction of a local postcolonial literature. These writers were schooled in a colonial education system that was, by the 1950s and 60s, in ideological disarray, as the jingoistic, imperial texts of the English syllabus began to give way to the crisis and self-interrogation of literary modernism. The students who graduated from these classes went on to create a first wave of Fijian creative writing in English. As this article shows, Griffen, Manoa, and Subramani carried into their writing fragments and forms of the texts they had been required to learn by rote, and they refashioned these into new wholes. In their short stories and poems of the late 1960s and early 70s, these writers turned the literature of past imperial breakdown towards present and future needs, adapting fragmentary, perspectival and multivocal texts towards a postcolonial independence still riven by colonially introduced problems. Ultimately, we argue, the creation of this new literature denotes the failure of the education system to impress British superiority upon its colonial subjects, and the success of the subaltern in reclaiming the means of expression.

Journal of Modern Literature , 2018

The intertextuality of Albert Wendt’s early novel Pouliuli (1977) reflects the complexity of Samo... more The intertextuality of Albert Wendt’s early novel Pouliuli (1977) reflects the complexity of Samoan modernity, bringing together traditional myths and legends with European and other postcolonial texts. Tracing allusions in Pouliuli further demonstrates the breadth of the novel’s intertextual range, and leads to a new understanding of Wendt’s negotiation between the strong oral tradition for which Samoa has long been renowned, and the form of literacy introduced by European colonialism. Pouliuli functions as a written narrative that retains characteristics of an indigenous oral mode, staging at a formal level a counter to the novel’s otherwise pessimistic depiction of the corruption brought by European colonialism. Identifying Wendt’s intertextuality as a development of Samoan storytelling challenges the Eurocentric privileging of the Global North as the seat of literary modernity, and registers the essentially self-determining nature of Pacific literature.

James Joyce Quarterly, 2015

The notebooks cataloged as Cornell MSS 38 and 63 document offer a valuable record of Joyce’s rese... more The notebooks cataloged as Cornell MSS 38 and 63 document offer a valuable record of Joyce’s research into a range of contemporary business practices: banking, commercial law, clerical work, insurance, the stock exchange, shipping, advertising, and trade. Although they have been widely available for nearly four decades, since they were published as the “Notes on Business and Commerce” in the James Joyce Archive, they have received almost no critical attention, not least because they have been incorrectly attributed to Joyce’s brief employment as a bank clerk in Rome in 1906–7.

Presenting new evidence to correct the received dating, and identifying Joyce’s sources as a series of popular commercial guides published in London between 1909 and 1912, this article retrieves the “Notes on Business and Commerce” as a valid genetic archive. Establishing that Joyce took his notes at a crucial turning point in his literary career, and that he actively adapted this material for Ulysses, it opens up new ways of understanding Joyce’s incorporation of the commercial world into his writing.

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Feb 2017

This article identifies a peculiarity in Joyce’s representation of perhaps the most prominent com... more This article identifies a peculiarity in Joyce’s representation of perhaps the most prominent commodity in Ulysses, Plumtree’s Potted Meat. Numerous symbolic interpretations of the product have been proposed, for the most part elaborating the sexual and mortuary connotations already made explicit in the novel. But while earlier critics sought Biblical and Classical parallels, and later critics drew political analogies, Plumtree’s has scarcely been considered as a historical fact, a commodity sold in turn-of-the-century Dublin. Returning to Fredric Jameson’s radical intervention “Ulysses in History”, this article eschews the symbolic approach, and shows that while Joyce undoubtedly drew the commodity into complex symbolic networks, these do not exhaust its significatory function: Plumtree’s Potted Meat turns out to be just as suggestive as a pot of meat as it does a symbol of sexual intercourse.

However, detailed analysis of this particular commodity also shows that Jameson’s historicisation remains incomplete. Approaching the product with what Andrew Gibson has defined as methodological “particularism”, this article demonstrates the central importance of the Irish situation to understanding Joyce’s representation. Against earlier symbolic readings, this article builds upon Jameson and Gibson to identify Joyce’s treatment of this particular commodity as part of his broader engagement with imperial discourses in the “Ithaca” episode—a stylistic engagement, which exposes the exploitative motivations behind British ideologies of progress and universal improvement. Connecting Plumtree’s Potted Meat to other comparable commodities in Ulysses, notably Bovril, it sheds new light on the political dimensions of Joyce’s complex representation of Irish consumer culture, moving away from the decontextualised and sometimes anachronistic speculations that have up to now dominated critical discussion.

English Studies, 2016

"Bloom’s CV" analyses James Joyce’s representation of Bloom’s early career as a commercial travel... more "Bloom’s CV" analyses James Joyce’s representation of Bloom’s early career as a commercial traveller in Ulysses. Reading Bloom’s various jobs—from cattle sales to insurance—in their historical context, the article develops a clearer understanding of Joyce’s mimesis, and shows that he presents a strikingly realistic career path for a second-generation Hungarian-Jewish immigrant in 1904 Ireland. While the recent historicist turn in Joyce studies has at times suppressed the text’s other narrative dimensions, the article proceeds to identify unsettling intertextual connections to anti-Semitic discourses that were contemporary in the Irish nationalist press. Explaining these connections as part of Joyce’s broader reimagining of Odysseus as a Semitic traveller, the article positions Joyce’s overdetermined characterisation of Bloom as a crucial transitional moment between the naturalistic aesthetic the author inherited and developed in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and his transcendence of the realist mode in Finnegans Wake.

Modernism/modernity, 2015

This article reconsiders Joyce’s representation of Dublin’s 1904 advertising industry in Ulysses,... more This article reconsiders Joyce’s representation of Dublin’s 1904 advertising industry in Ulysses, with particular emphasis upon his protagonist Bloom’s role as an advertisement canvasser. It argues that our understanding of the narrative significance of Bloom’s job has been muddled by the generalizing accounts of the subject published in the 1980s and 90s, which extrapolated dubious historical claims from theoretical speculations on the text.

With close attention to the details of Joyce’s narrative, this article demonstrates that Bloom’s professional responsibility in advertising has been overvalued. Conversely, while his limited involvement with other agents and agencies has been taken to reflect an underdeveloped Irish advertising industry, this article identifies the disconnection as a crucial aspect of Joyce’s characterization.

With a new historical attention, this article shows that the state of Dublin’s advertising industry in 1904 has been seriously underestimated, and that the assumption of colonial underdevelopment has obscured a complex and particular history. Participating in the recent historicist turn in Joyce studies, it revises the received critical accounts to identify the specific details of Bloom’s advertising role as significant aspects of his social alienation as a Jewish outsider in 1904 Dublin.

Dublin James Joyce Journal, 2012

This article presents the first analysis of the theories Joyce drew upon in his construction of B... more This article presents the first analysis of the theories Joyce drew upon in his construction of Bloom’s advertising consciousness in Ulysses, tracing Joyce’s representation through his annotation of Howard Bridgewater’s Advertising, Or the Art of Making Known (c. 1910). It demonstrates that with his ‘retrospective arrangement’ of Dublin life, Joyce causes Bloom to appear with a tacit understanding of specific theoretical advances, particularly in the new psychological approaches to advertising that were only just beginning to emerge in 1904, and that only became widespread in the 1910s and 1920s.

In some instances, Bloom’s approach reflects the earlier stage of psychological advertising theory, established by Harlow Gale and others, which focused upon cognition and the arrest of attention. In other instances, it points towards the later stages proposed by Walter Dill Scott, which emphasised the unconscious motivations of human action, and sought to affect the consumer through linguistic and pictorial connotations. The analysis of Joyce’s ‘Advertising’ notes alongside their source text shows that this characterisation of Bloom reflects overlaps and inconsistencies in Bridgewater’s own popular guide.

Genetic Joyce Studies, 2012

Book Chapters by Matthew Hayward

New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific, 2019

Colonised and coerced from the late 1700s, the peoples of Oceania enacted an extraordinary cultur... more Colonised and coerced from the late 1700s, the peoples of Oceania enacted an extraordinary cultural and artistic renaissance in the second half of the twentieth century. This rebirth was closely entwined with newly won political independence in many Pacific Island nations, and was an integral part of the ongoing struggle for Indigenous rights in others. Galvanised by rapid developments in education, technology, transport, communication, and print, Pacific Islanders across the region fashioned national and regional artistic movements that examined the modernity that they were simultaneously bringing into existence. Exploring questions of resistance, language, tradition, and change, Oceanian writers and artists worked with and toward the new: new national identities, new regional identities, and new ways of articulating these lived experiences.

This opening chapter lays the groundwork for those that follow, as it reflects on what is at stake in bringing Pacific studies and modernist studies into conjunction. It presents the rise of an anglophone literary movement in Oceania within the context of this conversation, figuring it in terms of the local and transnational forces propelling and preventing a Pacific-driven modernity. Outlining the relationship between the major works and the far greater number of smaller pieces published in the literary periodicals that flourished between 1960 and 1990, this chapter identifies the textual and infrastructural networks that gave Pacific writers a sense of connectedness. Following this historical positioning of Pacific creativity, it outlines the ways in which the contributors’ chapters read Pacific creativity in tandem with modernist preoccupations, mapping the connections between the questions, insights, and nuances that they offer.

The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, 2022

After the interruptions and miscommunications of ‘Aeolus’, the eighth episode of Ulysses appears ... more After the interruptions and miscommunications of ‘Aeolus’, the eighth episode of Ulysses appears refreshingly unified. Starting with Homer’s man-eating Lestrygonians, this essay links the chapter’s mythic parallelism to its other traditional critical unities: plot (a hungry Bloom looks for lunch), naturalistic characterization (he is increasingly ‘dejected’ by scenes of carnality and rapacity), and language (the continual food puns and imagery).

However, the Homeric parallel also directs attention to consumption in its broader, social sense. Taking Bloom through the heart of Dublin’s burgeoning consumer center, Joyce foregrounds branded products and other finished commodities, and these lead out from the seemingly self-contained text towards its material, historical context: a colonial consumer economy in which Irish industry is stifled by British dominance in manufacture and trade.

I argue that chapter 8 of Ulysses presents Joyce’s so-called ‘initial style’ in its finished form. Consisting in the interplay between Bloom’s inner world and the outer world of 1904 Dublin, and conditioned by the greater social, ideological and discursive contexts in which Joyce wrote and situated his work, the style of ‘Lestrygonians’ encourages the reader to clinch interpretive strategies ready for the trickier straits that follow.

Graduate Research Supervision in the Developing World: Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices, 2020

This chapter is a reflection upon the challenges—practical, cultural and epistemological—of super... more This chapter is a reflection upon the challenges—practical, cultural and epistemological—of supervising postgraduate theses in Literary Studies in the School of Language, Arts and Media at the University of the South Pacific. It does not attempt to recap the mostly sound principles provided in general guides to effective postgraduate supervision (Bartlett & Mercer, 2001; Eley & Jennings, 2005; Green, 2005; Eley & Murray, 2009; Wisker, 2012). Instead, it focusses on two key aspects that are underrepresented in the scholarship generally, and almost completely undiscussed in the Pacific Island context: postgraduate diversity, and the cultural challenges introduced by the use of supervisors from outside of the region. Proceeding from the understanding that the experiences of postgraduates in the Pacific Islands are not adequately represented in educational research, the chapter utilises a mixed-method, though primarily qualitative, research methodology. It draws upon Pacific-led research on educational practices in the Pacific Islands; makes comparisons with the neighbouring (but not identical) context of Māori supervision in Aotearoa/New Zealand; refers to University data around enrolment and retention, and presents the findings of a survey conducted with research postgraduates, enrolled in Literature research Masters or PhD programmes at the University of the South Pacific in the past decade.

New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific, 2019

This chapter proceeds with two aims. Firstly, it tracks correspondences between the early novels ... more This chapter proceeds with two aims. Firstly, it tracks correspondences between the early novels of Albert Wendt—Sons for the Return Home (1973), Pouliuli (1977) and Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979)—and a limited set of passages in the work of James Joyce. Developing narrative and structural techniques from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and incidental motifs from the ‘Nestor’ episode of Ulysses (1922), Wendt mobilises Joyce in a number of key ways: in his portrayal of the Pacific artist coming into literary consciousness, in his challenge against the distortions of colonial history, and in his depiction of the rebellious young man confronting the mechanisms of colonial power. Demonstrating specific consistencies between the source material and patterns in Wendt’s methods of adaptation, the chapter claims a relationship between the two authors that has gone unnoticed in Wendt scholarship. Tracing these connections improves our understanding of both the textual dynamics of Wendt’s early novels, and the range of material that the author referred to in the creation of a modern Samoan literature.

Secondly, however, the chapter reflects upon what is at stake in making these connections at all. Emphasising Wendt’s connections with European antecedents risks deemphasising his connections with Samoan and other Pacific texts and traditions, and while Wendt insists that the two are not mutually exclusive, he also insists that they are not equal, given the long history of outside agencies claiming Pacific space and material for a falsely neutral global modernity. Finding defence against critical appropriation in Wendt’s idea of indigenisation, the chapter ends by considering ways in which Wendt converts outside influences into self-determining drivers of cultural growth and adaptation, adding to the ‘inheritance’ of his literary ‘descendants’.

Modernism and Food Studies

In Joyce in the World of Publishing. European Joyce Studies, ed. William S. Brockman and Tekla Mecsnóber. Forthcoming with Rodopi.

Critics of advertising and consumer culture in Ulysses have often been drawn to the ‘Nausicaa’ e... more Critics of advertising and consumer culture in Ulysses have often been drawn to the ‘Nausicaa’ episode. From Thomas Richards to Garry Leonard, these critics have found in Gerty MacDowell an irresistible psychological and historical case study, and have unanimously interpreted her to be Joyce’s naturalistic depiction of a ‘real' historical type: the deluded, fashion-attentive young woman of the early twentieth century. In doing so, they follow an entrenched critical tendency. Almost from the start, Gerty MacDowell has been read as a young woman whose personality is a ‘product’ of the commercialised discourses that surround her.

Yet with the style of ‘Nausicaa’ foregrounded as it is, the chapter is manifestly intertextual, and must be read in the first place against the specific discourses with which Joyce engaged. While a number of recent discussions elaborate the episode’s intertextual significance, these too have nevertheless been unable to break from the naturalistic assumption.

This essay begins by outlining some of the problems with the received assumption that Gerty constitutes Joyce’s critique of a feminised consumer culture. With close attention to the ‘namby-pamby jammy marmaladey drawersy (alto là!) style’ of the first half of the episode, it shows that Gerty’s narrative is even more intertextually determined than has been recognised, drawing upon the loose but nevertheless identifiable lexicon of female-oriented advertisements from the first decades of the twentieth century.

With this background in mind, it argues against the naturalistic bias in ‘Nausicaa’ criticism, and argues that Joyce’s satire is aimed not at the putative female consumer, nor even exactly at the society within which she consumes. Described by Joyce as a ‘Projected Mirage’, the episode engages rather with the specific discourse from which her figure is drawn. It may be that Bloom is supposed to observe a ‘real’ woman on Sandymount Strand. But he observes her through a register garnered from contemporary consumerist discourses, particularly advertising—a register itself dreamt up and projected by men.

While Joyce’s representation of advertising in Ulysses has received some critical emphasis, his s... more While Joyce’s representation of advertising in Ulysses has received some critical emphasis, his subtler depiction of the more traditional sales method of street-selling has gone practically unregistered. This article argues that the critical neglect plays out an imbalance established by Joyce within the narrative.

Comparing Joyce’s representation of advertising and street-selling to Henry Mayhew’s earlier account in London Labour and the London Poor, this article finds that Joyce, like Mayhew, distinguishes between the visual appeal of the advertisements and the aural appeal of the street-sellers.

It argues that the street-sellers in Ulysses are hard to discern because their vocal sales method is outmoded by the ascendant visual advertising culture. By centring the narrative upon Bloom’s sensual perception, Joyce successfully conveys the persuasive efficacy of a new spectacular consumerism, and the redundancy of the vocal methods of the earlier nineteenth-century. Joyce thus presents Dublin as a consumer culture in transition.

Symposium by Matthew Hayward

This symposium brings together regional and international scholars to work towards an understandi... more This symposium brings together regional and international scholars to work towards an understanding of Oceanic Modernism that is detailed and coherent, without being uniform or conformist. In particular, the symposium seeks to examine the relationship between Oceanic works – literature, art, dance, architecture and so on – and the modernities from which these emerged, and the relationship between Oceanic works and other modernisms, however so defined.

Drafts by Matthew Hayward

CALL FOR PAPERS Oceanic Modernism Editors: Matthew Hayward and Maebh Long (University of the So... more CALL FOR PAPERS

Oceanic Modernism

Editors: Matthew Hayward and Maebh Long
(University of the South Pacific)

We invite submissions that consider Oceanic modernism/modernity, with possible topics including but not limited to:

• Literature, Art, Theatre, Dance
• Weaving, Tattoos, Architecture, Cultural Practices
• Colonialism and Postcolonialism
• Nationalism and Transnationalism
• Independence, Indigeneity and Indenture
• Tradition and Modernisation
• Globalisation and Capitalism
• Gender, Racial and Cultural Relations
• Influence, Adaptation and Appropriation

Please send your title and a 500-word abstract to oceanicmodernisms@gmail.com by 30 September, 2016. Completed essays will be due by 31st January, 2017.

Directions: Journal of Education Studies, 2021

Modernism/modernity, 28.2, 2021

Modernist Cultures, 2020

Journal of Modern Literature , 2018

James Joyce Quarterly, 2015

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Feb 2017

English Studies, 2016

Modernism/modernity, 2015

Dublin James Joyce Journal, 2012

Genetic Joyce Studies, 2012

New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific, 2019

The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, 2022

Graduate Research Supervision in the Developing World: Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices, 2020

New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific, 2019

Modernism and Food Studies

In Joyce in the World of Publishing. European Joyce Studies, ed. William S. Brockman and Tekla Mecsnóber. Forthcoming with Rodopi.

CALL FOR PAPERS Oceanic Modernism Editors: Matthew Hayward and Maebh Long (University of the So... more CALL FOR PAPERS

Oceanic Modernism

Editors: Matthew Hayward and Maebh Long
(University of the South Pacific)

We invite submissions that consider Oceanic modernism/modernity, with possible topics including but not limited to:

Please send your title and a 500-word abstract to oceanicmodernisms@gmail.com by 30 September, 2016. Completed essays will be due by 31st January, 2017.

Modernist Cultures, 2020

Special issue of Modernist Cultures (forthcoming 2020), edited by Erin M. Carlston, Matthew Haywa... more Special issue of Modernist Cultures (forthcoming 2020), edited by Erin M. Carlston, Matthew Hayward and Brian Reed.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the staff and students of two newly founded universities in the Pacific I... more In the 1960s and 1970s, the staff and students of two newly founded universities in the Pacific Islands helped foster a golden age of Oceanian literature. At the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific, bold experiments in curriculum design recentered literary studies around a Pacific modernity. Rejecting the established British colonial model, writer-scholars placed Pacific oratory and a growing body of Oceanian writing at the heart of the syllabus. From this local core, students ventured outward to contemporary postcolonial literatures, where they saw modernist techniques repurposed for a decolonizing world. Only then did they turn to foundational modernist texts, encountered at last as a set of creative tools rather than a canon to be copied or learned by rote.

The Rise of Pacific Literature reveals the transformative role and radical adaptations of global modernisms in this golden age. Maebh Long and Matthew Hayward examine the reading and teaching of Pacific oral narratives, European and American modernisms, and African, Caribbean, and Indian literature, tracing how Oceanian writers appropriated and reworked key texts and techniques. They identify the local innovations and international networks that spurred Pacific literature’s golden age by reading crucial works against the poetry, prose, and plays on the syllabi of the new universities. Placing internationally recognized writers such as Albert Wendt, Subramani, Konai Helu Thaman, Marjorie Crocombe, and John Kasaipwalova alongside lesser-known works published in Oceanian little magazines, this book offers a wide-ranging new account of Pacific literary history that tells a fresh story about modernism’s global itineraries and transformations.

For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands ha... more For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies’ critical map. Yet, as the chapters of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences — realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film — Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities. New Oceania presents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.