Renascent Joyce

Revival, reinvention, and regeneration: the concept of renascence pervades Joyce’s work through the inescapable presence of his literary forebears. By persistently reexamining tradition, reinterpreting his literary heritage in light of the present, and translating and re-translating from one system of signs to another, Joyce exhibits the spirit of the greatest of Renaissance writers and artists.

            In fact, his writing derives some of its most important characteristics from Renaissance authors, as this collection of essays shows. Though critical work has often focused on Joyce’s relationship to medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Dante, Renascent Joyce examines Joyce’s connection to the Renaissance in such figures as Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Bruno.

            Joyce’s own writing can itself be viewed through the rubric of renascence with the tools of genetic criticism and the many insights afforded by the translation process. Several essays in this volume examine this broader idea, investigating the rebirth and reinterpretation of Joyce’s texts. Topics include literary historiography, Joyce’s early twentieth-century French cultural contexts, and the French translation of Ulysses. Attentive to the current state of Joyce studies, the writers of these extensively researched essays investigate the Renaissance spirit in Joyce to offer a volume at once historically informed and innovative.

Daniel Ferrer is director of research at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes in Paris. He is currently editing The “Finnegans Wake” Notebooks at Buffalo. Sam Slote is assistant professor in James Joyce studies and critical theory at Trinity College Dublin. He is coeditor of How Joyce Wrote “Finnegans Wake.” André Topia is professor emeritus of English literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. His coedited books include "Scribble" 2, Joyce et Flaubert and “Dubliners”: rituels d’écriture.