At Fault is an exhilarating celebration of risk-taking in the work of James Joyce. Esteemed Joyce scholar and teacher Sebastian Knowles takes on the American university system, arguing that the modernist writer offers the antidote to the risk-averse attitudes that are increasingly constraining institutions of higher education today. Knowles shows how Joyce's work connects with research, teaching, and service, the three primary functions of the academic enterprise. He demonstrates that Joyce's texts continually push beyond themselves, resisting the end, defying delimitation. The characters in these texts also move outward-in a centrifugal pattern-looking for escape. Knowles further highlights the expansiveness of Joyce's world by undertaking topics as diverse as the symbol of Jumbo the elephant, the meaning of the gramophone, live music performance in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses, the neurology of humor, and inventive ways of teaching Finnegans Wake. Contending that error is the central theme in all of Joyce's work, Knowles argues that the freedom to challenge boundaries and make mistakes is essential to the university environment. Energetic and delightfully erudite, Knowles inspires readers with the infinite possibilities of human thought exemplified by Joyce's writing.

In August 1919, a production of James Joyce's Exiles was mounted at the Munich Schauspielhaus and quickly fell due to harsh criticism. The reception marked the beginning of a dynamic association between Joyce, German-language writers, and literary critics. It is this relationship that Robert Weninger analyzes in The German Joyce. Opening a new dimension of Joycean scholarship, this book provides the premier study of Joyce's impact on German-language literature and literary criticism in the twentieth century. The opening section follows Joyce's linear intrusion from the 1910s to the 1990s by focusing on such prime moments as the first German translation of Ulysses, Joyce's influence on the Marxist Expressionism debate, and the Nazi blacklisting of Joyce's work. Utilizing this historical reception as a narrative backdrop, Weninger then presents Joyce's horizontal diffusion into German culture. Weninger succeeds in illustrating both German readers' great attraction to Joyce's work as well as Joyce's affinity with some of the great German masters, from Goethe to Rilke, Brecht, and Thomas Mann. He argues that just as Shakespeare was a model of linguistic exuberance for Germans in the eighteenth century, Joyce became the epitome of poetic inspiration in the twentieth. A volume in The Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The contributors to this volume investigate several themes about music's relationship to the literary compositions of James Joyce: music as a condition to which Joyce aspired; music theory as a useful way of reading his works; and musical compositions inspired by or connected with him.

Though they were born a generation apart, Joseph Conrad and James Joyce shared similar life experiences and similar literary preoccupations. Both left their home countries at a relatively young age and remained lifelong expatriates. Empire and Pilgrimage in Conrad and Joyce offers a fresh look at these two modernist writers, revealing how their rejection of organized religion and the colonial presence in their native countries allowed them to destabilize traditional notions of power, colonialism, and individual freedom in their texts. Throughout, Agata Szczeszak-Brewer ably demonstrates the ways in which these authors grapple with the same issues--the grand narrative, paralysis, hegemonic practices, the individual's pilgrimage toward unencumbered self-definition--within the rigid bounds of imperial ideologies and myths. The result is an engaging and enlightening investigation of the writings of Conrad and Joyce and of the larger literary movement to which they belonged.

By taking the principles of manuscript genetics and using them to engage in a comparative study of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, Dirk Van Hulle has produced a provocative work that re-imagines the links between the two authors. His elegant readings reveal that the most striking similarities between these two lie not in their nationality or style but in their shared fascination with the process of revision. Van Hulle's thoughtful application of genetic theory--the study of a work from manuscript to final form in its various iterations--marks a new phase in this dynamic field of inquiry. As one of only a handful of books in English dealing with this emerging area of study, "Manuscript Genetics, Joyce's Know-How, Beckett's Nohow" will be indispensable not only to Joyce and Beckett scholars but also to anyone interested in genetic criticism.

At Fault is an exhilarating celebration of risk-taking in the work of James Joyce. Esteemed Joyce scholar and teacher Sebastian Knowles critiques the state of the modern American university, denouncing what he sees as an accelerating trend of corporatization that is repressing discussions of controversial ideas and texts in the classroom. Arguing that Joyce offers the antidote to risk-averse attitudes in higher education, he shows how the modernist writer models an openness to being "at fault" that should be central to the academic enterprise.Knowles describes Joyce's writing style as an "outlaw language" imbued with the possibility and acknowledgment of failure. He demonstrates that Joyce's texts and characters display a drive to explore the boundaries of experience, to move outward in a centrifugal pattern, to defy delimitation. Knowles further highlights the expansiveness of Joyce's world by engaging a diverse range of topics, including Jumbo the elephant as a symbol of imperialism, the gramophone as a representation of the machine age, solfege and live music performance in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses, Joyce's jokes and the neurology of humor, and inventive ways of reading and teaching Finnegans Wake.Contending that error is the central theme in all of Joyce's work, Knowles argues that the freedom to challenge boundaries and make mistakes is essential to an effective learning environment. Energetic and delightfully erudite, and offering insights drawn from over thirty years of classroom experience, Knowles inspires readers with the infinite possibilities of free human thought exemplified by Joyce's writing.