THE INFLUENCE OF THEORIES OF HISTORY ON THE STYLE OF JAMES JOYCE'S "FINNEGANS WAKE" (IRELAND).
Item
-
Title
-
THE INFLUENCE OF THEORIES OF HISTORY ON THE STYLE OF JAMES JOYCE'S "FINNEGANS WAKE" (IRELAND).
-
Identifier
-
AAI8611331
-
identifier
-
8611331
-
Creator
-
BRAY, PAUL CYRUS.
-
Contributor
-
Allen Mandelbaum
-
Date
-
1986
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, English
-
Abstract
-
The style of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake is best described as a successful attempt to problematize the temporal nature of the act of reading. Both Joyce's motives for making such an attempt and the means he utilized in realizing it become more comprehensible when seen in relation to his encounters with the theories of history of Giambattista Vico, William Butler Yeats and Wyndham Lewis.;Throughout Joyce's work there is a marked dissatisfaction with history as it is conventionally understood. This breaks down into two principal forms: (1) dissatisfaction with history as pseudo-myth or the self-serving fabulation of nation or family and (2) dissatisfaction with real history insofar as there is no ideal global community from whose vantage point history may be written. The stylistic consequence of this dissatisfaction may be seen in Joyce's rejection of "story".;In Vico, Yeats and Lewis Joyce encountered models of history radically different from conventional models. A distinction may be drawn between the poetic practice in Finnegans Wake and the book's "built-in" poetics. Scattered throughout Finnegans Wake are numerous passages of auto-commentary in which the Wakean problematizing of the temporal nature of the act of reading is linked with the theories of history of Vico, Yeats and Lewis. The nature of Wakean style may be clarified by examining these passages.;Vico's imaginative universals are exemplified by the Wakean pun or portmanteau word. The Vichian notion of different epochs having different relationships between man and language influenced Joyce's attempt to forge a style that would survive the various catacylismic epistemological shifts of those ages. Yeats's attempt to devise a model of history in which reality and justice may be held in the mind at the same time finds expression in Finnegans Wake in the use of superposition of meaning. Lewis's valorization of space over time appears in Wakean style as a kind of spatializing of language.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
English
