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Reauthorizing Joyce
Vicki Mahaffey argues that for James Joyce, language is the most important link between the unconscious and the socio-historical. It serves as a precise link beween the psychological and the political, between the individual and the communal, between the future and the past. Quoting Finnegans Wake , Mahaffey describes language as a bag full of "presents."
This first paperback edition of Reauthorizing Joyce suggests that the reader's role in relation to Joyce's novels is more active and significant than is usually the case. "Reading Joyce goes beyond entertainment into 'hands on' instruction about how to perceive and process language more productively, enjoyably, and responsibly. Joyce provides readers with novels that are workshops in interpretive responsibility and sensual perceptiveness."
Language, according to Mahaffey, is the real hero of Joyce's work. This study shows how language functions in Joyce as an index to unconscious desires and as a record of how people have responded to the sensual aspects of language through time.Vicki Mahaffey is associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written numerous book chapters and articles, many on James Joyce, for journals such as Critical Inquiry and James Joyce Quarterly .
This first paperback edition of Reauthorizing Joyce suggests that the reader's role in relation to Joyce's novels is more active and significant than is usually the case. "Reading Joyce goes beyond entertainment into 'hands on' instruction about how to perceive and process language more productively, enjoyably, and responsibly. Joyce provides readers with novels that are workshops in interpretive responsibility and sensual perceptiveness."
Language, according to Mahaffey, is the real hero of Joyce's work. This study shows how language functions in Joyce as an index to unconscious desires and as a record of how people have responded to the sensual aspects of language through time.Vicki Mahaffey is associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written numerous book chapters and articles, many on James Joyce, for journals such as Critical Inquiry and James Joyce Quarterly .
241 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 21, 2023
Excelente y le pondría diez estrellas. Para mi gusto se centra un poco demasiado en temas textiles pero está todo tan increíblemente bien escrito que a punto estoy de empezármelo otra vez.
May 1, 2024
This is a feast for thought which Vicki got us. While digging through Joyce's corpse and its literal remains she finds gold, emerald and all possible shiny and fascinating stuff that tingles my brains in a pleasant way and force my eyes to see everything from some quite a lot of different new angles. She stays true to original, while making her own words be said through Joyce's. A fresh blood pumped into every book he wrote.
The terms "author" and "authority" the author writes (pun is intended) share the same root and in some way have the same meaning - the one who's in command. She manages to snatch that shit out of dirty oldfarts making living out of deading James Joyce into her vicious and oh-so-delightfully clever hands and into ours as readers. She's sort of Robin Hood, who stole from rich academia a privilege to enjoy and fabricate your own Joyce, back to people. She is Prometheus of Joyce, in one of the few good senses it means.
Joyce is just a vehicle for her witty and ever interesting thought, which could be only tithed down
to one single and solid (in a good bad way) idea: text and texture is the same thing. The idea turns out to be so fruitful that stems with a shifting perspectives for a reading, one not excluding the other, enhancing and making it fuller and more rich. We all are just clothes, she says, everything is in a sense. There is not single core to the onion of human, only layers and layers of textures. And it's ugly and beautiful at the same time and none of that. The whole point is in the acceptance of fragmentarity and rejection to reduce anything to one.
It was a pure joy(ce) to read. It made me struggle though another 10 pages of Finnegan's Wake.
The terms "author" and "authority" the author writes (pun is intended) share the same root and in some way have the same meaning - the one who's in command. She manages to snatch that shit out of dirty oldfarts making living out of deading James Joyce into her vicious and oh-so-delightfully clever hands and into ours as readers. She's sort of Robin Hood, who stole from rich academia a privilege to enjoy and fabricate your own Joyce, back to people. She is Prometheus of Joyce, in one of the few good senses it means.
Joyce is just a vehicle for her witty and ever interesting thought, which could be only tithed down
to one single and solid (in a good bad way) idea: text and texture is the same thing. The idea turns out to be so fruitful that stems with a shifting perspectives for a reading, one not excluding the other, enhancing and making it fuller and more rich. We all are just clothes, she says, everything is in a sense. There is not single core to the onion of human, only layers and layers of textures. And it's ugly and beautiful at the same time and none of that. The whole point is in the acceptance of fragmentarity and rejection to reduce anything to one.
It was a pure joy(ce) to read. It made me struggle though another 10 pages of Finnegan's Wake.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews