Forms of Materiality in James Joyce's Fiction - by Alberto Tondello (Hardcover)

About the Book

Explores the depiction and treatment of inanimate matter in James Joyce's oeuvre.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

James Joyce claimed he had 'a grocer's assistant's mind'. In the Joycean stockrooms Alberto Tondello shows us, the inventory does not sit inert upon the shelves but glows with liveliness, summoning us to lively observation. Forms of Materiality places Joycean subject-object relations in a radiant, compelling new light.--Paul K. Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania