Joyce's Book of Memory: The Mnemotechnic of UlyssesDuke University Press, 1999 M01 6 - 240 pages For James Joyce, perhaps the most crucial of all human faculties was memory. It represented both the central thread of identity and a looking glass into the past. It served as an avenue into other minds, an essential part of the process of literary composition and narration, and the connective tissue of cultural tradition. In Joyce’s Book of Memory John S. Rickard demonstrates how Joyce’s body of work—Ulysses in particular—operates as a “mnemotechnic,” a technique for preserving and remembering personal, social, and cultural pasts. Offering a detailed reading of Joyce and his methods of writing, Rickard investigates the uses of memory in Ulysses and analyzes its role in the formation of personal identity. The importance of forgetting and repression, and the deadliness of nostalgia and habit in Joyce’s paralyzed Dublin are also revealed. Noting the power of spontaneous, involuntary recollection, Rickard locates Joyce’s mnemotechnic within its historical and philosophical contexts. As he examines how Joyce responded to competing intellectual paradigms, Rickard explores Ulysses’ connection to medieval, modern, and (what would become) postmodern worldviews, as well as its display of tensions between notions of subjective and universal memory. Finally, Joyce’s Book of Memory illustrates how Joyce distilled subjectivity, history, and cultural identity into a text that offers a panoramic view of the modern period. This book will interest students and scholars of Joyce, as well as others engaged in the study of modern and postmodern literature. |
From inside the book
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... James Joyce Foundation in 1994 proved to be a memorable experience and a valuable contribution to my work . I also thank the staff of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin , Texas , where I was allowed access to Joyce's ...
... James Joyce Foundation in 1994 proved to be a memorable experience and a valuable contribution to my work . I also thank the staff of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin , Texas , where I was allowed access to Joyce's ...
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... James , have tolerated years of distraction as I worked on this project and yet have endured all with good humor and love . They , with my parents and sisters , make all things worthwhile . Joyce's Book 4 of Memory Introduction We must ...
... James , have tolerated years of distraction as I worked on this project and yet have endured all with good humor and love . They , with my parents and sisters , make all things worthwhile . Joyce's Book 4 of Memory Introduction We must ...
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... James Joyce , echoing Vico , once told Frank Budgen that " imagina- tion was memory " ( Budgen , Myselves 187 ) , and a remarkable number of those who have written their own reminiscences of Joyce describe his " marvelous " or ...
... James Joyce , echoing Vico , once told Frank Budgen that " imagina- tion was memory " ( Budgen , Myselves 187 ) , and a remarkable number of those who have written their own reminiscences of Joyce describe his " marvelous " or ...
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... James Joyce . In it , he sees Joyce's art as a complex , shifting , and uneasy marriage of modern and medieval paradigms or systems . Eco's assumption is that works of art can be read as " epistemological metaphors " ( vii ) , and that ...
... James Joyce . In it , he sees Joyce's art as a complex , shifting , and uneasy marriage of modern and medieval paradigms or systems . Eco's assumption is that works of art can be read as " epistemological metaphors " ( vii ) , and that ...
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... James Joyce will be the analysis of a moment of transition in con- temporary culture " ( 2-3 ) . For Eco , Ulysses " succeeds in being revelatory because the contradictions of its poetics are those of our culture " ( 56 ) . In her essay ...
... James Joyce will be the analysis of a moment of transition in con- temporary culture " ( 2-3 ) . For Eco , Ulysses " succeeds in being revelatory because the contradictions of its poetics are those of our culture " ( 56 ) . In her essay ...
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Common terms and phrases
allusion argues Artist associations become Bergson Bloom and Stephen Bruno's Budgen chance characters Circe claims consciousness Creative Evolution cultural unconscious dead destiny Dignam's Dublin echoes élan vital eleven Ellmann entelechy essay example experience father Finnegans Wake force Freud Gerty ghost Golden Ass guilt habit Hamlet Herr human ideas identity images imagination intertextual involuntary memory Ithaca James Joyce Joyce's texts Joyce's Ulysses Joyce's writing Leopold Bloom Lestrygonians magic Maher's memory in Ulysses metempsychosis models of mind modern modernist Molly mother mourning narrative nature Nausicaa nostalgia notes notion novel Nymph Odyssey paralyzed past Portrait present Proust provides Psyche psychic reader reading recollection remember repressed Richard Ellmann Rudy Rudy's death sense sexual Shakespeare shared memories soul Stephen and Bloom Stephen Dedalus Stephen's riddle suggests symbols tension text of Ulysses textual memory theory Theosophical thinks thoughts tion traditional Trieste Ulysses University Press voluntary Wandering Rocks words