Welcome to HJS, Volume 8, Number 2, whose focus is much more variegated than has been the case with HJS so far. The three sections of which the present issue consists are not divided according to their subject matter, but merely as consequence of the three different channels via which they have found their way into this issue.
The first section brings together a selection of papers presented at the 3rd Prague James Joyce Colloquium: Louis Armand's opening "Introductory Remarks" deal with the past and present status of genetic criticism, and considers its most potent possibility to lie in symbiosis with hypermedia, or what has come to be called Joycemedia. Sam Slote's "Questioning Technology in Ithaca" departs from the Heideggerian concept of "enframing" to show how the hyper-scientific narrative of the Ithaca episode comes to treat the two protagonists as "disponible resources to be exploited." Finn Fordham's article "The writing of growth and the growths of writing" offers a meticulous genetic analysis of FW 503.30-505.29, with a perticular emphasis on the questions of the "organic form" theory and, more broadly, of Joyce's relation to nature. The present volume features the first half of Mr. Fordham's work in progress, which shall be completed in the next HJS issue.
The second part contains two essays originally given at this year's Trieste James Joyce Summer School. The editor would like to express his indebtedness to the Program Director, Dr. John McCourt, for his help in obtaining these essays for HJS. During my sojourn in Trieste earlier this month, a closer future cooperation between Trieste James Joyce Summer School and HJS has been agreed on - the present issue thus hopes to establish a tradition of HJS becoming a publication venue for Trieste conference papers that deal with issues relevant for its focus. Papers from this year's Summer School which could not be submitted in time for this July issue are envisaged to appear in the February 2008 HJS issue. The two papers presented here deal with two different types of genesis - the first with that of writing, the other with that of the book. Jed Deppman's article on "The Problem of Genesis in the Texts of Joyce" seeks to match the methods of genetic criticism to three selected scenes in Ulysses that present different modes of literary genesis, taking them as "a limited yet serious étude by Joyce on emergent writing." Katarzyna Bazarnik's paper, "Joyce, Liberature and Writing of the Book," applies Zenon Fajfer's term "liberature," denoting a distinct literary genre in which the material being of the text as a book is constitutive of its meaning, to Joyce's later major works in order to "account for those of their features that have been either ignored or treated as accidental until now."
The "Nightletter" groups together three essays submitted specifically for this issue of HJS. Maura Harrington's piece deals with the ways in which the subversive revolt of Stephen Dedalus might be actually seen as complicit with that against which it rebels. Nicholas Morris explores in his essay Chapter 3 of Book III of Finnegans Wake, with the particular emphasis on Joyce's use of the tetragrammaton YHWH, seen as tracing the evolution of the Viconian Human Age in III.3, as well as on Wake's idiosyncratic use of paronomasia. In the concluding piece of this issue, William Sayers draws attention to the as yet little explored topic of Joyce's use of the Shelta cryptolect of Irish travellers in Finnegans Wake and its wider implication regarding Joyce's cryptolexical techinques of composition.
Readers are welcome to respond to individual papers: signed letters, etc., may be published in future issues.
The next issue of HJS, which is due online in February 2008, will welcome essays representing any critical approach (feminism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, pop culture, poststructuralism, media and technology, historicism, formalism, genetic criticism, textual criticism, etc.) to any of Joyce's works or to any issues connected with the broad area of Joyce Studies.
FURTHER NOTES
RE-NASCENT JOYCE: XXIst INTERNATIONAL JAMES JOYCE SYMPOSIUM
June 15-20, 2008
Université Francois Rabelais, Tours, France
The biannual James Joyce Symposium held in Tours, France, aims to stress the connections between Joyce and the Renaissance: notably links to Rabelais, Shakespeare, and the humanists and scholars of that period, e.g. Bruno. Re-Nascent Joyce also seeks to be a forum for considering the Joycean text in statu nascendi - and shall therefore also focus on textual genetics. The Tours Symposium will also feature a full range of social events in the evenings, where scholars can meet informally and enjoy the beautiful landscapes of Tours and the Loire Valley.
The organisers will make available a number of scholarships for young scholars from Eastern European countries so they can attend the Symposium. These are in addition to the scholarships funded by the International James Joyce Foundation.
The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 15 March 2008.
Academic Committee:
Daniel Ferrer (ITEM-CNRS): daniel.ferrer@ens.fr
Sam Slote (Trinity College, Dublin): slotes@tcd.ie
André Topia (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): andre.topia@orange.fr
For further information see the Symposium web-site: http://joyce2008.univ-tours.fr/
Cordially and hypermedially,
David Vichnar
(Editor)
31 July, 2007