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
Results 1-5 of 37
Page 2
... notions of what memory is and how it works . I will expose the traces of these philosophical and psychological models of mind in some of Joyce's writings prior to Finnegans Wake , and I will outline some ways in which these ideas work ...
... notions of what memory is and how it works . I will expose the traces of these philosophical and psychological models of mind in some of Joyce's writings prior to Finnegans Wake , and I will outline some ways in which these ideas work ...
Page 4
... notion of innate ideas , or of racial memory ? Our contemporary notions regarding the formation of subjec- tivity — in the humanities , at least — reflexively privilege either personal experience or the power of linguistic and ...
... notion of innate ideas , or of racial memory ? Our contemporary notions regarding the formation of subjec- tivity — in the humanities , at least — reflexively privilege either personal experience or the power of linguistic and ...
Page 5
... notions of the self and of " nature " ( for example , the stream - of - consciousness representations in Ulysses ) , and external organizing patterns such as the schemas , which she argues represent culture and art over nature . 7 Herr ...
... notions of the self and of " nature " ( for example , the stream - of - consciousness representations in Ulysses ) , and external organizing patterns such as the schemas , which she argues represent culture and art over nature . 7 Herr ...
Page 7
... notions of subjectivity , based on as- sumptions about the indeterminacy of language and the constitution of the subject within and through language , may blind us to the older epis- temological models embedded in Joyce's novel . The ...
... notions of subjectivity , based on as- sumptions about the indeterminacy of language and the constitution of the subject within and through language , may blind us to the older epis- temological models embedded in Joyce's novel . The ...
Page 8
... notions of memory and mind operated along with the " climate of opinion " of Joyce's time and the assumptions that he inherited from his Jesuit education to create a confusing variety of choices or struggles between often conflicting ...
... notions of memory and mind operated along with the " climate of opinion " of Joyce's time and the assumptions that he inherited from his Jesuit education to create a confusing variety of choices or struggles between often conflicting ...
Other editions - View all
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