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612-822-4611
Useless Joyce: Textual Functions, Cultural Appropriations

Useless Joyce: Textual Functions, Cultural Appropriations

Paperback

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1487519958
ISBN13: 9781487519957
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: Jul 25 2020
Pages: 200
Weight: 0.66
Height: 0.46 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Tim Conley's Useless Joyce provocatively analyses Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake and takes the reader on a journey exploring the perennial question of the usefulness of literature and art. Conley argues that the works of James Joyce, often thought difficult and far from practical, are in fact polymorphous meditations on this question. Examinations of traditional textual functions such as quoting, editing, translating, and annotating texts are set against the ways in which texts may be assigned unexpected but thoroughly practical purposes. Conley's accessible and witty engagement with the material views the rise of explication and commentary on Joyce's work as an industry not unlike the rise of self-help publishing. We can therefore read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as various kinds of guides and uncover new or forgotten uses for them. Useless Joyce invites new discussions about the assumptions at work behind our definitions of literature, interpretation, and use.

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Literary Criticism