{"title":"James Joyce and the Writing of the Tomb","authors":"Craig Buckwald","doi":"10.1353/jjq.2022.0004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:James Joyce's well-known remark that the puzzles and enigmas of Ulysses could ensure his \"immortality\" points to a central but largely unrecognized aspect of his two big books and, to a lesser extent, of all literature. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are examples par excellence of how literary works are inherently a defiant response to mortality in its most capacious sense, as the transitory condition of all people and things. The two works defy mortality by performing with extraordinary effectiveness the memorializing and symbolic functions performed by \"tombs\" of all types. Seeing Ulysses and the Wake in this way challenges some widely held beliefs about Joyce's art. It also allows us to understand the works anthropologically, as essentially funerary artifacts that, in conjunction with \"ritual\" activities, both preserve traditional civilized order, values, and thought and selectively reforge them for the modern world.","PeriodicalId":42413,"journal":{"name":"JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jjq.2022.0004","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:James Joyce's well-known remark that the puzzles and enigmas of Ulysses could ensure his "immortality" points to a central but largely unrecognized aspect of his two big books and, to a lesser extent, of all literature. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are examples par excellence of how literary works are inherently a defiant response to mortality in its most capacious sense, as the transitory condition of all people and things. The two works defy mortality by performing with extraordinary effectiveness the memorializing and symbolic functions performed by "tombs" of all types. Seeing Ulysses and the Wake in this way challenges some widely held beliefs about Joyce's art. It also allows us to understand the works anthropologically, as essentially funerary artifacts that, in conjunction with "ritual" activities, both preserve traditional civilized order, values, and thought and selectively reforge them for the modern world.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1963 at the University of Tulsa by Thomas F. Staley, the James Joyce Quarterly has been the flagship journal of international Joyce studies ever since. In each issue, the JJQ brings together a wide array of critical and theoretical work focusing on the life, writing, and reception of James Joyce. We encourage submissions of all types, welcoming archival, historical, biographical, and critical research. Each issue of the JJQ provides a selection of peer-reviewed essays representing the very best in contemporary Joyce scholarship. In addition, the journal publishes notes, reviews, letters, a comprehensive checklist of recent Joyce-related publications, and the editor"s "Raising the Wind" comments.