Vigorous Joyce: Atlantic Readings of James Joyce.
Editors: M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera / Vanessa Silva Fernández / Martín Urdiales Shaw.
Universidade de Vigo: Servizo de Publicacións, 2010. (sep@uvigo.es)  ISBN: 978-84-8158-475-2

In the spirit of fostering the appreciation of convergences and exchanges of contemporary scholarship on Joyce, the volume gathers a selection of 15 essays which includes papers delivered by participants at the 19th  Annual Conference of the Spanish James Joyce Society together with the work of reputed international Joyce scholars who have lectured at the University of Vigo in recent years.

Central to the first chapter,“Contexts, Discourses and Affiliations”,  is the identification of the discourses and contexts that have contributed to the conformation of often contradictory Joycean affiliations. Chapter 2 brings together three linked essays on the topic of “Textual and Cultural Negotiations” that move the discussion from the identification of ambivalent Joycean affiliations to the exploration of textual and cultural forms of negotiation through which Joyce is appropriated and rewritten.Section 3, titled “Reading as Decoding”, collects three essays which foreground the complexity of  reading Joyce as they all contend that what Joyce’s texts make evident is that we cannot read them without interpreting structures, relationships and interconnections. The essays in section 4 reveal that  two of the main generators of meaning for readers of Joyce’s texts are undoubtedly to be found in the inter-textual and extra-textual links provided by the writer’s use of “Language and Myth”. The essays in the final section, “Influences and Convergences”, look at the different interrelations between Joyce and other writers who have not only prefigured him but have been, directly or indirectly, influenced by his work.

Taken together, all the essays illustrate the inexhaustibility and openness characteristic of the Joycean text. The pieces collected here constitute a set of notably vigorous proposals as they all testify that reading Joyce is an ever-renewed activity which necessarily entails endless investigation, interpretation and, above all, enjoyment. Just as the harbour of Vigo has often become a place of encounters and departures, our Vigorous Joyce seeks to situate itself at the crossroads between different forms of reading in an attempt to contribute to the rich network of critical and theoretical intersections which are essential to Joycean scholarship.

 

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