Joyce and the scene of modernity

Abstract

The contextual studies collected for this book, taken together, explore the notion that, in all of Joyce's major works, his idea of altereffects (alterity or otherwise) pervades his treatment of the modern condition. The author proposes a revitalized vision of modernism, taking Joyce as a privileged site upon which to build a broader cultural context. The book takes a comparative perspective, which raeds Joyce's work alongside that of, notable, Mallarme and Proust, seen here as inaugurating an alternative continental modernim to which Joyce belongs. This approach marks an alternative direction for Joyce studies and for modernist literary studies in general in that it negotiates between historicism and igh theory, combining the study of specific historical contexts with a theoretically informed reflection on the fundamental questions of modern human existence: the questions of being, of language, of the subject, of the very possibility of literature in the modern world.