Joyce's Allmaziful Plurabilities

Polyvocal Explorations of Finnegans Wake

Kimberly J. Devlin, Christine Smedley

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780813064819, 9780813061542
• eBook ISBN: 9780813063577
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

“A brilliantly collaged snapshot of the variety and wealth of literary criticism, and Joyce studies, today.”—Tony Thwaites, author of Joycean Temporalities
 
“Celebrates the multiplicity and sheer rampant excess of Joyce’s prodigally polysemous text with seventeen different scholars employing a likewise prodigal range of critical methodologies.”—Patrick O’Neill, author of Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes
 
“Each of the scholars involved is at the top of his and her game. Their commitment and excitement about the task at hand is evident on virtually every page. This book makes the Wake relevant and accessible to a whole new generation of readers.”—Garry Leonard, author of Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce
 
This is the first Finnegans Wake guide to focus exclusively on the multiple meanings and voices in Joyce’s notoriously intricate diction. Rather than leveling the text it illuminates many layers of puns, wordplay, and portmanteaus, celebrating the Wake’s central experimental technique.
Renowned Joyce scholars explore the polyvocality of individual chapters using game theory, ecocriticism, psychoanalysis, historicism, myth, philosophy, genetic studies, feminism, and other critical frameworks. They set in motion cross-currents and radiating structures of meaning that permeate the entire text and open up satisfying readings of the Wake for novices and seasoned readers alike.

A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Polyvocal Explorations of Finnegans Wake
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Prodigal Text
• 1. The “gift of seek on site”: The Subject of Prophecy in I.1
• 2. “Here Comes Everybody”: HCE and the Existence of Others in I.2
• 3. Weathering the Text: Barometric Readings of I.3
• 4. Habeas Corpus Epiphany in I.4
• 5. Joyce’s Common Reader: A Primer for Sensory Consciousness in I.5
• 6. Playful Reading: I.6 and Game Theory
• 7. Shem’s “strabismal apologia”: The Split Vision of the Famine in I.7
• 8. Fluid Figures in “Anna Livia Plurabelle”: An Ecocritical Exploration of I.8
• 9. Moveable Types: The Character System in “The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies” in II.1
• 10. “MUTUOMORPHOMUTATION”: Horus and Set as Principles of the Digital and Analog in II.2
• 11. Irish History and Modern Media: Generating Courage in II.3
• 12. Joyce’s Countergospel in II.4
• 13. Salvation, Salves, Saving, and Salvage: The Linguistic Underpinnings of III.1
• 14. Jaunty Jaun’s Brokerly Advice in III.2
• 15. The Daughter in the Father: The Revolutionary Aspect of III.3
• 16. The Porters, Polypragmatic Paradigms, and Pseudoselves in III.4
• 17. “Ricorso”: The Flaming Door of IV
• List of Contributors
• Index