James Joyce after Postcolonialism (original) (raw)
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A Postcolonial Study of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ireland's status as a postcolonial country is still under debate, and the disposition of regarding James Joyce, an Irish writer, as a master of Modernism more complicates the discussion of his work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, under the theory of the postcolonial. This paper holds the view that Ireland like any other countries once colonized by a strong power is of much relevance to the colonial relationship, and Joyce, through depicting Stephen's gradual alienation from and his ambivalence towards religion, nationalist movement, and Ireland, indicates Stephen's dynamic self/identity as a refutation against the unitary and static identity of Irish being Catholic and nationalists who pursue the restoration of Celtic past. And Stephen by resorting to aesthetics and exiling himself from Ireland is to look for liberation as one way of resisting colonial influence which is reinforced by Ireland's proclaiming the single identity.
Joyce, Ireland, Britain (review)
Modernism Modernity, 2008
H istory has proven to be less a nightmare than a boon for Joyceans in recent years. Though critics have acknowledged the historical significance of Joyce's texts at least since T. S. Eliot first noted that Ulysses made sense of the "immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history," 1 the last twenty years or so have seen the development of a decisive historicist trend in Joyce studies. For Andrew Gibson and Len Platt, however, important studies of Joyce and history by scholars like Robert Spoo and James Fairhall remained frustratingly theoretical and for that reason missed the "Joycean lesson of specificity" (6). 2 The essays in this volume are meant to overcome this tendency toward abstraction by employing a form of historical analysis the editors call the "London method" (17). Though they confess that, aside from themselves, there is no "London school," they describe "a certain set of intellectual and scholarly habits that feature in the work that London Joyceans tend specifically to do" (17). These habits cohere as a more or less materialist method in which "the relation of theory to history and text" is altered (18). The practitioners of this method do not claim to offer an "accessible, final truth" (19). Indeed, they are interested primarily in the "possibility of establishing certain limits to interpretation" (19). What this generally means is a greater emphasis on the particulars of historical context, though as some of the essays demonstrate, discussions of historical abstractions are not excluded. For example, Finn Fordham's genetic approach to Finnegans Wake uncovers Joyce's "ironization of universal history" and his "critique of how universalization appeared in flawed attempts to justify imperialist policy" (199). In Fordham's view, the "[t]ranshistoricism" of Joyce's texts is precisely the effect of a continuity between particularities across time (202). This is not Hegelian totalization but a kind of "[t]ransepochal pattern hunting" that results in a "mockery of universalization" (203, 209). The London school appears to have learned the lessons of Michel Foucault, for while it "aims at exactitude," it is also "attentive to the possibility of historical discontinuities, ruptures, breaks" (19). Just as often, though, Joyce's texts give evidence of surprising historical continuities and connections, as is evident in Wim Van Mierlo's essay, which argues that "Joyce's high notions of exile" were part of a long history of emigration in Ireland, from voyaging saints like St. Brendan to the "heyday of the Celtic Tiger" (180, 195). In this context,
The Novel in Ireland and the Language Question: Joyce's Complex Legacy
Logos: a journal of modern culture and society, 2022
he undiminished impact of Joyce in world literature, as well as the great critical and commercial popularity of contemporary Irish fiction, can blind us to the fact that the novel has an uneasy place in the Irish literary tradition. For more than a century, Irish fiction has enjoyed popularity and esteem on the world literary stage out of all proportion to the size of the country's population. But whereas in poetry and drama one can easily discern relationships and lineages amongst Irish writers, and identify shared concerns, influences, and practices shaping their work, it is very difficult to describe the contours of "the Irish novel" or to account, collectively, for its success. There is very little, on the surface, to connect the linguistic experimentation of Anna Burns' Milkman, the satirical comedy of Claire Kilroy or Paul Murray, the unadorned, quasi-didactic prose of Sally Rooney, and the vernacular flights of Patrick McCabe. It is harder still to perceive a clear connection between contemporary Irish novelists and their pioneering forebears in the twentieth century. Moreover, while Irish novels continue to win prizes and acclaim, and abroad Ireland is viewed as a veritable fiction factory, in the Irish popular imagination at home, in a way unimaginable in France, England, the United States, or Italy, the emblematic image of "the writer" has stubbornly remained (or at least did until very recently) that of a poet or a playwright rather than a novelist.
Joyce in Progress: Proceedings of the 2008 James Joyce Graduate Conference in Rome
2009
The essays gathered in Joyce in Progress are the fruit of the First Annual Graduate Conference in Joyce Studies held at the Universita Roma Tre in February 2008, and organized by the Italian James Joyce Foundation. They are a testament to the enduring fascination of Joyce's writings and the ongoing liveliness of debate about the writer and his works and contexts. There is a wide array of genuine research on show here, which looks at Joyce from a variety of angles, focusing on his deeply complex autobiographical fiction through genetic studies, post-colonial studies, eco-criticism and intertextual and multi-modal approaches. This volume offers ground-breaking multi-disciplinary readings and usefully connects Joyce's work with that of contemporary writers, rivals, followers, and successors.
The Commodification of James Joyce
Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
Since its publication in 1922, James Joyceʼs Ulysses has been mined by critics more than it has been read by the general public. For several decades academic work on the novel was largely carried out by American scholars, much to the chagrin of Irish academics, and lambasted by everyone from the Irish press and politicians to Joyce family members, and perhaps most of all by the Roman Catholic establishment, which in the years after the formation of the Irish Free State operated almost as an arm of the government. John McCourtʼs highly readable monograph study describes, decade by decade, the reception not only of Ulysses, but also of Joyceʼs other works in Ireland, and analyses the growing commodification of Joyce, charting the growth of the ʻJoyce industryʼ from the early Bloomsday celebrations held by half a dozen enthusiasts to the modern day festivities attended by thousands of revellers, most of whom are happy to admit that they have barely opened Joyceʼs magnum opus. McCourt focuses on three aspects of the consumption of Ulysses: book sales and the early difficulty of obtaining copies of the book; scholarly exploration and critical reception at home and abroad; the use and abuse of Joyce and his work by vested interests, including the Irish government, private businesses, and the Irish tourist industry. A fourth and hitherto under-researched thesis is that Joyceʼs self-imposed exile is central to any interpretation of Ulysses. McCourt argues that Joyce was influenced by his life away from Ireland, especially in Trieste, much more than is acknowledged by most Joyceans.
JOYCE’S OTHERS / THE OTHERS AND JOYCE (Joyce Studies in Italy 22), 2020
This essay will research what I shall call “James Joyce” literature, which is a specific type of speculative fiction. To qualify as such a work, James Joyce must function as a character within the text and the story must be told within some kind of alternate history. This can be a conveniently changed timeline to allow for new biographical occurrences, or else the author can create fantastical “New Joyces” who act in ways completely foreign to his real-life personality. It is my objective to evaluate “James Joyce” literature as an oeuvre, to determine why authors continue to be compelled to retell Joyce’s life story in new and radical ways. Joyce is one of only a few writers who has received this treatment, (with Shakespeare and his “Shakespeare” literature a notable comparison), so I will study why authors have deemed it important to recreate his character fictionally, in multifaceted forms. His role as an artistic innovator is deserving of homage, but his reinvention as a pop-culture icon today is also of importance. I carry out close readings of these “James Joyce” literary works, especially in connection to their usage of intertextual references to Joyce’s works, and how these quotes and stylistic imitations carry out literary homage, parody, pastiche and burlesque concepts. Finally, I will discuss how the works share an overarching stylistic kinship concerning the style of juxtaposing of high artistic culture (intertextual referencing from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake say) with those from popular culture (such as the Da Vinci Code and Back to the Future).
Forging a New Nation: A Study of a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Abstract: The paper tries to contextualize the modernist text, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce in the trajectory of nationalism and attempts to posit it as a cultural text that foregrounds the forging of the ‘uncreated’. The paper shows how Joyce becomes critical of the nationalization of the past that the Celtic Revival aimed at. The protagonist, Stephen tries to participate in the burgeoning national culture by forging new paths to future. Joyce also criticizes the ethnocentric, xenophobic and monolithic aspects of Irish nationalism which was hostile to the pluralistic, heterogeneous and multivalent perspectives. Along with nationalism, Joyce also criticizes the modern construct of the nation state. Based on the link between nation and imagination, Joyce provides a new possibility of imagining a nation that celebrates the multiple voices by accommodating the marginalized and silenced voices, quite outside the grids of the nation state. The text shows how through the recreation of primordial and perennial cultural and ethnic propensity of Ireland, such a nation can be forged, and thus the reality of experience can be encountered. Keywords: postcolonialism, nationalist historiography, monolithic nationalism, essentialism, homogeneity
“'James Joyce is My Man': Kate O'Brien and James Joyce"
'Joyce's Heirs' [peer reviewed collection], 2019
To Kate O’Brien, James Joyce was “the greatest Artist –there will never be another”. Despite this, her work las long been associated by critics with Balzac’s social vistas, George Elliot’s realism, and populist romance. It is only in the last few years that O’Brien has been discussed for her modernist interests and innovative style, including her rather original development of subtext and fictional autobiography, and her engagement with feminism, post-colonial Irishness, socialism, or q ueer representation. The influence of Joyce in her work is one of the areas that requires more investigation. Elizabeth Foley O’Connor has recently argued that Joyce is not just a writer O’Brien admired, but in fact her “most sustained and pervasive literary mentor”. Katie Donovan said in 1988 that “James Joyce and Kate O’Brien are an incongruous pair –the former the giant of male Irish writers, the latter one of the least recognised of Irish women writers. Yet people once laughed at the idea of comparing Shakespeare with Jane Austen. They don’t any longer.” This essay discusses points of convergence between O'Brien and Joyce, considering some of their ideas and beliefs, and some stylistic features shared by them. It focuses on the intertextual links between 'The Land of Spices' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and 'Mary Lavelle' and 'Ulysses', paying particular attention to two aspects: Anna-Stephen’s education, and Lavelle-Bloom’s flânerie. .... ========== ISBN: 978-84-9860-727-7 Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka," 'James Joyce is My Man': Kate O’Brien and James Joyce ". [peer-reviewed collection] 'Joyce’s heirs. Joyce’s imprint on recent global literatures', Olga Fernández Vicente ed., Bilbo/Bilbao: Basque Country University Press, 2019, pp. 8-23. Free access: https://web-argitalpena.adm.ehu.es/listaproductos.asp?IdProducts=UHPDF197277&titulo=Joyce%92s%20heirs.%20Joyce%92s%20imprint%20on%20recent%20global%20literatures