Edinburgh University Press Forms of Materiality in James Joyce's Fiction

Explores the depiction and treatment of inanimate matter in James Joyce’s oeuvre Reconsiders the role of material entities within Joyce’s modernist literary practices Adopts an interdisciplinary approach with close readings of Joyce’s oeuvre informed by contemporary critical theories Positions Joyce’s works at the intersection between the material and the linguistic turns as it attends to the working of language in its materiality and the impact of material entities in cognitive and aesthetic processes Forms of Materiality in James Joyce’s Fiction offers a fundamental reappraisal of material entities in James Joyce’s works from a new materialist and ecocritical perspective. It argues that material entities – parsed under the categories of symbols, banal objects, waste and the substance of art – are essential in Joyce’s articulation of aesthetic ideas, theories of perception and practices of representation. Alberto Tondello claims that Joyce’s objects are particularly well placed to highlight collaborations and dissonances between human and nonhuman entities, and to link the material nature of objects with the abstraction of aesthetic concepts and philosophical ideas. With its interdisciplinary approach, Forms of Materiality recognises the complexities of the material world and the vibrancy of human perception as depicted in Joyce’s works, thus offering novel readings and original approaches to his oeuvre.