A critical analysis of how James Joyce used language in his work

The papers collected in this volume capture some of the excitement of the 11th International James Joyce Symposium, held in Venice and Trieste, June 1988. 'The contents of this book are by no means as restrictive as the title might suggest. The contributors explore not only Joyce's 'languages' and modes of communication and meaning, but, as well, concepts of significance and communication in broader contexts. Through Joyce, the writers explore and develop their own approaches and theories about language and languages, about semiotics and understanding. And about psychology, gender, physiology, politics, philosophy, linguistics, science, and culture. About literature in other words.'

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Stephen Dedalus's famous complaint articulates a characteristic modern attitude toward the perceived burden of the past. As Robert Spoo shows in this study, Joyce's creative achievement, from the time of his sojourn in Rome in 1906-07 to the completion of Ulysses in 1922, cannot be understood apart from the ferment of historical thought that dominated the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tracing James Joyce's historiographic art to its formative contexts, Spoo reveals a modernist author passionately engaged with the problem of history, forging a new language that both dramatizes and redefines that problem.

The novel is modernism's most vital and experimental genre. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this 2007 Companion is an accessible and informative overview of the genre.

This innovative analysis shows how James Joyce uses the language of prayer to grapple with profoundly human ideas in Finnegans Wake—the dreamlike masterpiece that critics have called his “book of the night.” Colleen Jaurretche moves beyond what scholars know about how Joyce composed this work to suggest why he wrote and arranged it as he did. Jaurretche provides a sequential reading of the four chapters and corresponding themes of the Wake from the perspective of prayer. She examines image, manifested by the letters of the alphabet and the Book of Kells; magic, which Joyce equates with the workings of language; dreams, which he relates to poetry; and speech, glorified in the Wake for its potential to express emotions and ecstasy. Jaurretche bases her study on important thinkers from antiquity to the present, including Origen of Alexandria, Giambattista Vico, and Giordano Bruno. She demonstrates how these philosophers influenced Joyce’s view that prayer can imbue language with power. This book is an illuminating and much-needed interpretation of a work that abounds with echoes and cadences of sacred language. Jaurretche’s insights will guide readers’ understanding of the style and structure of Finnegans Wake. A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles

First published in 1988, this classic text is established as one of the most important discussions of the language of literature. Re-issued as a result of recent critical interest, this edition includes a new preface by the author.

James Joyce and the Difference of Language offers an alternative look at Joyce's writing by placing his language at the intersection of various critical perspectives: linguistics, philosophy, feminism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism and intertextuality. Combining close textual analysis and theoretically informed readings, an international team of leading scholars explores how Joyce's experiments with language repeatedly challenge our ways of reading. Topics covered include reading Joyce through translations; the role of Dante's literary linguistics in Finnegans Wake; and the place of gender in Joyce's modernism. Two further essays illustrate aspects of Joyce's cultural politics in Ulysses and the ethics of desire in Finnegans Wake. Informed by debates in Joyce scholarship, literary studies and critical theory, and addressing the full range of his writing, this volume comprehensively examines the critical diversity of Joyce's linguistic practices. It is essential reading for all scholars of Joyce and modernism.

This is a series of connected essays by one of today's leading commentators on James Joyce.