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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Page
... Past as Obstruction 45 3 Memory , Destiny , and the Limits of the Self 87 4 Joyce's Mnemotechnic : Textual Memory in Ulysses 118 5 Intertextual Memory 167 Conclusion 181 Appendix 199 Notes 203 Bibliography 223 Index 233 Acknowledgments ...
... Past as Obstruction 45 3 Memory , Destiny , and the Limits of the Self 87 4 Joyce's Mnemotechnic : Textual Memory in Ulysses 118 5 Intertextual Memory 167 Conclusion 181 Appendix 199 Notes 203 Bibliography 223 Index 233 Acknowledgments ...
Page 2
... past , for his writings , more than those of most writers of prose , depend on elaborate repetitions , reworkings , and distortions of their own materials . " The hallucinations in Ulysses , " Joyce told Mercan- ton , " are made up out ...
... past , for his writings , more than those of most writers of prose , depend on elaborate repetitions , reworkings , and distortions of their own materials . " The hallucinations in Ulysses , " Joyce told Mercan- ton , " are made up out ...
Page 9
... past ] as something merely ' fixed ' and ' dead , ' " we can view the occurrences of the past as simply collectible and retrievable data ( 4 ) . Mnemosyne has fallen from her throne , and in her place rules Lesmosyne , for as Casey ...
... past ] as something merely ' fixed ' and ' dead , ' " we can view the occurrences of the past as simply collectible and retrievable data ( 4 ) . Mnemosyne has fallen from her throne , and in her place rules Lesmosyne , for as Casey ...
Page 10
... past " ( 14 ) . Perhaps the earliest example of this view of memory as nothing more than " imprinting " is Plato's ... past is rarely a straight- forward process of retrieval , but rather a creative or active search back through language ...
... past " ( 14 ) . Perhaps the earliest example of this view of memory as nothing more than " imprinting " is Plato's ... past is rarely a straight- forward process of retrieval , but rather a creative or active search back through language ...
Page 11
... past to some extent when we remember ? Is our access to the past limited to our personal experience , as the passivist tradition would have it , or are we capable of " remembering " much more , drawing memories from the minds of others ...
... past to some extent when we remember ? Is our access to the past limited to our personal experience , as the passivist tradition would have it , or are we capable of " remembering " much more , drawing memories from the minds of others ...
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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