Joyce, Race and 'Finnegans Wake'
Cambridge University Press, 1/11/2007
EAN 9780521868846, ISBN10: 052186884X
Hardcover, 222 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Len Platt charts a fresh approach through one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. Using original archival research and detailed close readings, he outlines Joyce's literary response to the racial discourse of twentieth-century politics. Platt's account is the first to position Finnegans Wake in precise historical conditions and to explore Joyce's engagement with European fascism. Race, Platt claims, is a central theme for Joyce, both in terms of the colonial and post-colonial conflicts between the Irish and the British, and in terms of its use by the extreme right. It is in this context that Joyce's engagement with race, while certainly a product of colonial relations, also figures as a wider disputation with rationalism, capitalism and modernity.
1. Joyce and race
introductory
2. 'No such race'
Finnegans Wake and the Aryan myth
3. Celt, Aryan and Teuton
4. 'Our darling breed'
the Wake and social Darwinism
5. Atlanta-Arya
theosophy, race and the Wake
6. 'Hung Chung Egglyfella'
staged race in Ulysses and the Wake
7. 'And the prankquean pulled a rosy one'
filth, Fascism and the family
8. Race and reading
a conclusion
Notes
Index.
Review of the hardback: 'Platt carves out a fascinating new area of enquiry, and in so doing offers an excitingly fresh 'European reading of the Wake' ... Platt's illuminating study is full of fascinating insights regarding the nature of Joyce's engagement with contemporary political matters. ... Joyce, Race and Finnegans Wake offers a valuable new reading of a largely uncharted area of Joyce's last work.' Review of English Studies