This collection introduces and examines the overarching ecological consciousness evinced in the writings of James Joyce. Reading Joyce with a keen attention to the manner in which the natural and built environment functions as context, horizon, threat, or site of liberation in Joyce's writing offers an engaging and fruitful way into the dense, demanding, and usually encyclopedic formation of knowledge that comprises Joyce's literary legacy.
Scholars working within Irish studies draw on a wide variety of critical outlooks, including cultural studies, post-colonial studies, transnational studies, gender studies and, of course, modernist studies; this book will help that community become better acquainted with how ecocriticism elucidates the work of Irish writers, and will encourage further research in this direction. Even writers like Joyce, who are usually regarded as primarily urban, exhibit a strong ecological dimension in their work, and there are many other Irish writers who have produced work that directly engages issues in ecology and environmental studies. Eco-Joyce covers a multitude of disciplines in an attempt to serve as a point of entry into Joyce and ecocriticism, of course, but it will also suggest ways in which Irish studies and modernist studies could gain energy from this relatively new and vital approach.
Robert Brazeau and Derek Gladwin are both at Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta, Canada.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Anne Fogarty
Introduction:
James Joyce and Ecocriticism Robert Brazeau and Derek
Gladwin
I NATURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN
JOYCE'S FICTION James Joyce, Climate
Change and the Threat to our
'Natural
Substance' Fiona Becket
Joyce
and the Everynight Cheryl Temple Herr
Joyce,
Ecofeminism and the River as Woman Bonnie Kime Scott
Word
and World: The Ecology of the Pun in Finnegans Wake Erin
Walsh
The
Tree Wedding and the (Eco)Politics of Irish Forestry in 'Cyclops': History,
Language and the
Viconian
Politics of the Forest Yi-Peng Lai
II JOYCE AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Negative
Ecocritical Visions in 'Wandering Rocks' Margot Norris
Joyce
Beyond the Pale Brandon Kershner
'Aquacities
of Thought and Language': The Political Ecology of Water in Ulysses Greg Winston
'Clacking
Along the Concrete Pavement': Economic Isolation and the Bricolage of Place in
James Joyce's Dubliners Christine
Cusick
Joyce
the Travel Writer: Space, Place and the Environment in James Joyce's Nonfiction
Derek Gladwin
III JOYCE, SOMATIC ECOLOGY AND THE BODY
'Can
excrement be art . . . if not, why not?' Joyce's Aesthetic Theory and the Flux
of Consciousness Eugene O'Brien
Environment
and Embodiment in Joyce's 'The Dead' Robert Brazeau
'Sunflawered'
Humanity in Finnegans Wake: Nature, Existential Shame and Transcendence James Fairhall
Ineluctable
Modality of the Visible: 'Nature' and Spectacle in 'Proteus' Garry Leonard