Abstract
As demonstrated in my recent monograph (Rewriting Joyce’s
Europe: The Politics of Language and Visual Design), James
Joyce’s decision to publish seventeen fragments of his ‘Work in
Progress’ (the later Finnegans Wake, 1939) spread over the
twenty-seven numbers of the Paris-based periodical transition
(1927-1938) entailed allegiance with editor Eugene Jolas’s
emphatically internationalist aesthetics. Defined as ‘An
International Quarterly for Creative Experiment’ for much of its
existence, transition hailed Joyce’s ‘verbal innovation’ as involving
a ‘huge synthesis’ of the accommodating ‘universality’ of the
English language with ‘more than a dozen foreign languages,’ thus
providing a ‘great example’ of the Revolution of Language and the
‘a super-national conception’ of art that Jolas promoted in his
magazine.
Investigating the verbal and visual paratexts of Joyce’s fragments,
the paper I propose will argue that while internationalism was a
dominant strand in the editorial commentary as well as, arguably,
in the visual design of at least the later issues of the magazine,
Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’ was also interpreted in the critical
reviews published in transition as ‘racial and national in colouring
and texture’ through encompassing various aspects of Irishness:
Catholicism, an attachment to Dublin, or being an antithesis of
British writing. Orchestrated by Joyce himself, partly written by
fellow Irishmen (Samuel Beckett, Thomas McGreevy) and
referencing historically rooted senses of Irishness, these reviews
thus provided a discursive parallel to Joyce’s efforts to include
evocations of Irishness in the visual design of a number of Wake
fragments published separately between 1928 and 1937.
Europe: The Politics of Language and Visual Design), James
Joyce’s decision to publish seventeen fragments of his ‘Work in
Progress’ (the later Finnegans Wake, 1939) spread over the
twenty-seven numbers of the Paris-based periodical transition
(1927-1938) entailed allegiance with editor Eugene Jolas’s
emphatically internationalist aesthetics. Defined as ‘An
International Quarterly for Creative Experiment’ for much of its
existence, transition hailed Joyce’s ‘verbal innovation’ as involving
a ‘huge synthesis’ of the accommodating ‘universality’ of the
English language with ‘more than a dozen foreign languages,’ thus
providing a ‘great example’ of the Revolution of Language and the
‘a super-national conception’ of art that Jolas promoted in his
magazine.
Investigating the verbal and visual paratexts of Joyce’s fragments,
the paper I propose will argue that while internationalism was a
dominant strand in the editorial commentary as well as, arguably,
in the visual design of at least the later issues of the magazine,
Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’ was also interpreted in the critical
reviews published in transition as ‘racial and national in colouring
and texture’ through encompassing various aspects of Irishness:
Catholicism, an attachment to Dublin, or being an antithesis of
British writing. Orchestrated by Joyce himself, partly written by
fellow Irishmen (Samuel Beckett, Thomas McGreevy) and
referencing historically rooted senses of Irishness, these reviews
thus provided a discursive parallel to Joyce’s efforts to include
evocations of Irishness in the visual design of a number of Wake
fragments published separately between 1928 and 1937.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 3-Dec-2022 |
| Event | Irish Literature and Periodical Culture - KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Duration: 1-Dec-2022 → 3-Dec-2022 https://ghum.kuleuven.be/lcis/irish-literature-and-periodical-culture |
Conference
| Conference | Irish Literature and Periodical Culture |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Belgium |
| City | Leuven |
| Period | 01/12/2022 → 03/12/2022 |
| Internet address |
Keywords
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Work in Progress, Our Exagmination, reception, paratexts, identity, national, international, transition, little magazines, Eugene Jolas