La thèse, intitulée « L’Avant-Postman: James Joyce, L’Avant-Garde et le Postmoderne », s’efforce de construire une généalogie littéraire post-joycienne, centrée sur les notions de l’avant-garde joycienne et de l’expérimentation littéraire, et prend les deux dernières œuvres de Joyce, Ulysses et Finnegans Wake, pour points de départ des avant-gardes d’après la seconde guerre mondiale, une époque généralement appelée « postmoderne », en Grande-Bretagne, aux États-Unis, et en France.L’Introduction identifie la notion d’une avant-garde joycienne à l'exploration, par Joyce, de la matérialité du langage et l’identification de sa dernière œuvre, le « Work in Progress », à la « Révolution du mot », défendue par Eugène Jolas dans sa revue transition. L’exploration joycienne de la matérialité du langage se comprend selon trois orientations : l'écriture conçue comme une trace physique, susceptible d’être distordue ou effacée ; le lan-gage littéraire compris comme une forgerie des mots des autres ; le projet de la création d’un idiome personnel, défini comme un langage « autonome », qui doit être caractéristique de la littérature vraiment moderne.La thèse est divisée en huit chapitres, deux pour la Grande-Bretagne (de B.S. Johnson, Brooke-Rose à Iain Sinclair), deux pour les États-Unis (de Burroughs et Gass à Acker et Sorrentino) et trois pour la France (le nouveau roman, l’Oulipo, et la groupe Tel Quel). Le Chapitre VIII retrace l’héritage joycien pour la littérature après 2000 dans ces trois espaces na-tionaux. La conclusion définit l’avant-garde joycienne, telle qu'elle est thématisée après la seconde guerre mondiale, comme un défi adressé à la notion de « postmoderne ». / The thesis, entitled “The Avant-Postman: James Joyce, the Avant-Garde and Postmodern-ism,” attempts to construct a post-Joycean literary genealogy centred around the notions of a Joycean avant-garde and literary experimentation written in its wake. It considers the last two works by Joyce, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, as points of departure for the post-war literary avant-gardes in Great Britain, the USA, and France, in a period generally called “postmodern.”The introduction bases the notion of a Joycean avant-garde upon Joyce’s sustained explora-tion of the materiality of language and upon the appropriation of his last work, his “Work in Progress,” for the cause of the “Revolution of the word” conducted by Eugene Jolas in his transition magazine. The Joycean exploration of the materiality of language is considered as comprising three stimuli: the conception of writing as physical trace, susceptible to distortion or effacement; the understanding of literary language as a forgery of the words of others; and the project of creating a personal idiom as an “autonomous” language for a truly modern literature.The material is divided into eight chapters, two for Great Britain (from B.S. Johnson via Brooke-Rose to Iain Sinclair), two for the U.S. (from Burroughs and Gass to Acker and Sorrentino) and three for France (the nouveau roman, Oulipo, and the Tel Quel group). Chapter Eight traces the Joycean heritage within the literature after 2000 of the three national literary spaces. The conclusion contextualises the theme of the Joycean post-war avant-garde as a challenge to the notion of “postmodernism.”

This dissertation represents an interpretation of the different forms of negativity in the modernist work that can be understood in terms of that which is unsaid, unsayable, or any other means of refusing to give an affirmative proposition regarding the world the work describes. It explores this negativity as both a representation of that which cannot be represented, and as an operational negativity, or negation, that takes part in the unmaking of the work's figures. The function of this negativity, as interpreted in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Krapp's Last Tape (1959) by Samuel Beckett, is to rewrite the representations of the work. Negativity is then also understood as a transformation and conditioning of elements already present in the literary work, that lead to ambivalent and problematic representations in the work. In this sense, negativity can be understood as a form of rewriting of the work's representations. The interpretations of the works of Proust, Joyce and Beckett are guided by this understanding, as given in the introduction, of negativity. In the analysis of Proust's novel, in "The Unmaking of Proust: Negation and Errors in Remembrance of Things Past", this form of negativity is situated in relation to Proust's handling of epistemological questions and mimetic references to reality in his work. The analysis of Joyce's work in "The Wandering of Language in James Joyce's Ulysses" discusses his treatment of language and the origins of language as being characterized by a negation that increases the difficulty of the language, and attempts to negate its origins. Finally, in the analysis of Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape", in "Beckett, Proust, and the End of Literature", it is shown that negativity conditions both the reception of the influence of Proust by Beckett, and the play's attempt to suggest the end of writing. In conclusion the dissertation returns to the idea of negativity as a form of rewriting, and briefly indicates that the function of negativity in these novels can be understood as a form of invention. / Thesis (M.A.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

This dissertation represents an interpretation of the different forms of negativity in the modernist work that can be understood in terms of that which is unsaid, unsayable, or any other means of refusing to give an affirmative proposition regarding the world the work describes. It explores this negativity as both a representation of that which cannot be represented, and as an operational negativity, or negation, that takes part in the unmaking of the work's figures. The function of this negativity, as interpreted in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Krapp's Last Tape (1959) by Samuel Beckett, is to rewrite the representations of the work. Negativity is then also understood as a transformation and conditioning of elements already present in the literary work, that lead to ambivalent and problematic representations in the work. In this sense, negativity can be understood as a form of rewriting of the work's representations. The interpretations of the works of Proust, Joyce and Beckett are guided by this understanding, as given in the introduction, of negativity. In the analysis of Proust's novel, in "The Unmaking of Proust: Negation and Errors in Remembrance of Things Past", this form of negativity is situated in relation to Proust's handling of epistemological questions and mimetic references to reality in his work. The analysis of Joyce's work in "The Wandering of Language in James Joyce's Ulysses" discusses his treatment of language and the origins of language as being characterized by a negation that increases the difficulty of the language, and attempts to negate its origins. Finally, in the analysis of Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape", in "Beckett, Proust, and the End of Literature", it is shown that negativity conditions both the reception of the influence of Proust by Beckett, and the play's attempt to suggest the end of writing. In conclusion the dissertation returns to the idea of negativity as a form of rewriting, and briefly indicates that the function of negativity in these novels can be understood as a form of invention. / Thesis (M.A.)--Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

One rarely sees the names James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway together in the same sentence. Their obvious differences in writing styles, nationalities, and lifestyles prevent any automatic comparison from being made. But when one compares their early short story collections, Dubliners and In Our Time, many surprisingly similarities appear. Both are collections of short stories unified in some way, written by expatriates who knew each other in Paris. A mood of despair and hopelessness pervades the stories as the characters are trapped in the human condition. By examining the commonalities found in their methods of organization, handling of point of view, attitudes toward their subjects, stylistic techniques, and modes of writing, one is continually brought back to the differences between Joyce and Hemingway in each of these areas. For it is their differences that make these artists important; how each author chose to develop his craft gives him a significant place in literature.

In this dissertation I examine a variety of modern and postmodern texts by applying the theories of French philosopher Henri Bergson. Specifically, I apply Bergson's theories of time, memory, and evolution to the texts in order to analyze the meaning of the poem and novels. I assert that all of the works disrupt conventional structure in order to question the linear nature of time. They do this because each must deal with the pressures of external chaos, and, as a result, they find timeless moments can create an internal resolution to the external chaos. I set out to create connections between British, Irish, and American literature, and I examine the influence each author has on others. The modern authors I examine include T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. I then show the ways this application can elucidate the works of postmodern authors Toni Morrison and Michael Cunningham.

This study of James Joyce's transmodal techniques explores, first, Joyce's implementation of non-language based media into his works and, second, how digital technologies might assist in identifying and studying these implementations. The first chapter introduces the technique of re-rendering, the artistic practice of drawing out certain characteristics of one medium and, by then depicting those characteristics in a new medium, calling attention to both media and their limitations and potentials. Re-rendering can be content-based or form-based. Joyce employs content-based re-rendering when he alludes to a piece of art in another medium and form-based re-rendering when he superimposes the form of another medium onto his text. The second chapter explores Dubliners as a panoramic catalog of the various aspects involved in re-rendering media. The collection of stories, or the fragmented novel, shows synaesthetic characters, characters engaged in repetition and revision, and characters translating art across media by superimposing the forms, materials, and conventions of one medium onto another. Dubliners culminates in the use of coda, a musical structure that commonly finalizes a multi-movement work. The third chapter analyzes of A Portrait of the artist as a young man, focusing on its protagonist who exhibits synaesthetic qualities and a penchant for repeating phrases. With each repetition he also revises, a practice that foreshadows the form-based re-rendering Joyce employs in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The fourth chapter explores the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses. In this episode, Joyce isolates the structure of the musical medium and transfers it to a literary medium. This technique shows his advanced exploration of the effects of one artistic medium on another and exemplifies his innovative technique of re-rendering art forms. Finally, the fifth chapter explores how we might use digital technologies to visualize Joyce's techniques of re-rendering. Based on these visualizations, we might identify further connections Joyce makes across his works. / text

Tracing the Material considers how James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s The Years, and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy represent material spaces and objects as a way of engaging with the fraught histories of England and Ireland. I argue that these three writers use spaces and objects to think through and critique nineteenth and early twentieth-century conflicts and transitions, particularly in the areas of empire, nationalism, gender, and family. Writing in the 1920s and 1930s, in the decline of British ascendency, the rise of the Irish Free State, and between the World Wars, these writers seek to interpret their history through the material world as a way of articulating their political, cultural, and social dissatisfactions, and to imagine the future. Drawing in part from Walter Benjamin’s materialist historiography and Jacques Derrida’s texts on spectrality and mourning, I investigate how the material world becomes the means through which nations and individuals express their guilt and desires, mourn losses, cut their losses, articulate the present, and anticipate the future. A study of the material world in these novels thus yields insights into how literary texts respond to history, both overtly and implicitly, foregrounding the importance of physical spaces and things in the larger narratives of national and personal history. My dissertation offers a new understanding of the way twentieth-century literature navigates its history through materiality, destabilizes subject-object distinctions, and exposes the often-unexpected power of the non-human world.

The female characters in James Joyce's fiction have received considerable critical attention since the publication of his writings and are often denigrated as misogynist portrayals of women. However, a textual and historical analysis of the female characters in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake shows them in a more constructive light. Such an analysis reveals them to be sympathetic portrayals of the situation of Irish women at the turn of the twentieth century. An historical contextualization of the characters is essential in any reading of Joyce, but is particularly important for his female characters. An historical and textual analysis also reveals a noticeable shift in the characterization of women from his early novel to his later novels. Additionally, approaching Joyce's fiction from this angle highlights the significant influence of Nora Barnacle, whom he eventually married, on Joyce's characterizations of women. Joyce started writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a very young man, before he met Nora, and this fact coupled with the choice of an adolescent boy as the narrator explains some of the criticism leveled at the novel. The subject of the novel, an artist as a young man, requires that the narrator be a self-centered youth. Consequently, the aesthetics of the novel are not focused on the female characters, but this is a result of the somewhat narcissistic adolescence of the narrator, not Joyce's purported misogyny. A close textual reading reveals the female characters as somewhat fleeting as a result of the age of the narrator, but not misogynist creations. The discussion of Portrait serves as an introduction to the larger subject of the admirable aspects of his female characters in Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Numerous parallels can be found between the female characters in "Araby," one of the first short stories in Dubliners, and the female characters in Portrait. However, throughout the progression of the collection of short stories, the female characters become more detailed, in part because the narrator is no longer an adolescent and has become more socially aware. This textual analysis of the female characters in "Araby," "Clay," "Eveline," and "The Dead" is enhanced by an historical analysis that clarifies the similarities between the women in the stories and the situation of Irish women as Joyce observed them, as discussed by Joyce in some of his published letters. An awareness of these close parallels between the characters and the historical setting reveals the characters as sympathetically drawn, eliciting a reader's pity rather than judgments of misogyny. A similar textual and historical analysis, when applied to Molly Bloom in Ulysses, reveals the mosaic-like quality of her characterization. Although she speaks only in the "Penelope" episode, Molly Bloom's characterization is established from the beginning of the novel through frequent references to her by her husband Leopold Bloom, and other characters throughout the novel. The layered or mosaic-like approach to her characterization is a departure from Joyce's earlier style, but the resultant character is engaging and intricately detailed. An historical and textual analysis accounts for the stylistic aspect of her character and allows for a more engaging perspective of Molly. Always innovative, Joyce transforms the mosaic style of characterization used for Molly in the characterization of Anna Livia Plurabelle and Issy in Finnegans Wake and, instead, creates the characters on an entirely differentscale, that of myth. Ulysses is a daytime walk through Dublin that could also function as a founding myth for Ireland; Finnegans Wake is the nighttime counterpart to a walk through Dublin. Joyce chose to stylistically obscure the language in the novel in order to create the nighttime setting for his dream-like comment on Dublin's founding myths. The characters of Finnegans Wake are rooted in mythic tradition also, which serves this aesthetic choice well. An historical and textual analysis of ALP and Issy reveals the universalized and nuanced characterization inherent in their creation and execution. From A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Dubliners, Joyce's early female characters are notable in their own right, and function as important precursors to Joyce's visionary approach to characterization which culminated in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake with Anna Livia Plurabelle.

This thesis analyses the responses of Irish writers and painters to a phase of national self-assertion that had arguably lost its liberating potential. It shows how the exhaustion of revolutionary pressures in Ireland after independence complicates the ties between creative activity and political activism. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship within political theory, literary criticism and art history, I chart an emerging network of literary and artistic techniques that confronts the representational aesthetics of the nation with strategies of paradox, reversal and renewal. My readings of the work of Denis Devlin, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Mainie Jellett, Jack Butler Yeats and, in particular, Thomas McGreevy, provide a means by which to distinguish other cultural possibilities that were imagined and pursued from 1922 to 1941, including McGreevy’s own aspiration to remould 'A Cultural Irish Republic'. The thesis argues that Ireland's political and artistic avant-garde were forcibly divided during this period: two factions that had been split apart by the effects of civil war and censorship. As such it will be preoccupied with a central question: how to sustain cultural strategies of revolutionary significance when the frontier between creative activity and political activism can no longer be straightforwardly crossed.

<p>The predominant focus on the male protagonist in the <em>Bildungsroman</em> genre has provoked feminist critics to offer a re-definition of the genre, claiming that the female protagonist's development differs in significant ways from the traditionally expected course of development (i.e. male). A feminist comparison between <em>A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man</em> and <em>Martha Quest</em> found, unexpectedly, that the female protagonist follows the traditional <em>Bildungsroman</em> trajectory in several respects, whereas the male protagonist deviates from it. <em>A Portrait</em> emphasizes the themes of childhood, formal education and religion, while in <em>Martha Quest</em> the themes of family relations, informal education, sexuality and marriage are treated at length. <em>Martha Quest </em>as an example of a female <em>Bildungsroman</em> deals specifically with the issues of role models, gender roles and gender inequality, which neither the traditional <em>Bildungsroman</em> nor <em>A Portrait </em>does.</p><p> </p>