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Literary Criticism English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

James Joyce's Techno-Poetics

by (author) Donald Theall

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
May 1997
Category
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442676374
    Publish Date
    May 1997
    List Price
    $84.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802009685
    Publish Date
    Jun 1997
    List Price
    $84.00

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Description

James Joyce's Techno-Poetics is on the cutting edge of an original and exciting new trend in Joycean studies, as it combines the study of literature, technology, and communication to reveal James Joyce as 'a key figure in the history of cyberculture.'

Donald Theall examines for the first time how Joyce conceived of the artist as an engineer and the artist's works as constructions, and reveals the importance of Joyce's understanding of the direction of a developing technoculture. Theall explores the interrelationships between the machinic and the processes of encoding, decoding, reading, writing, and interpreting in Joyce's self-reflexive treatment of the book in Finnegans Wake. By situating this project in relation to memory and cultural production, Theall argues that Joyce's radical paramodern poetic practice has important implications for a wide variety of subsequent cultural and theoretical movements: dramatism, poststructuralism, semiology, and hypertextuality. Theall places Joyce in the context of other modern thinkers, such as Benjamin and Bataille, and draws a direct line of influence from Joyce to Marshall McLuhan and Neuromancer author William Gibson.

This is a remarkable and innovative work that makes an important contribution not only to Joycean studies, but to literary theory, modernism, cultural analysis, the history of ideas, and the relationship between literature, science, and technology.

About the author

Donald F. Theall was Molson Professor at McGill University before becoming President and Vice-Chancellor of Trent University (1980-87) where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Donald Theall's profile page