“Joyce’s Ulysses and Inorganic Form”

Prof. Derek Attridge
Emeritus Professor
University of York

***All are welcome***

Abstract:
The notion of organic form, an inheritance from Romantic philosophy and aesthetic theory, remains powerful today. Many features of James Joyce’s work can be explained as the fusing of form and content, from the ‘scrupulously mean’ style describing the constrained lives of his Dubliners to the sound effects of Finnegans Wake. Ulysses employs many devices whereby form echoes content, yet there are also features that are hard to account for in this way. This talk will explore what I am calling ‘inorganic form’ in Joyce’s novel, places where the sounds, shapes, and larger structures seem to have a life of their own, and to operate independently of the meanings they convey. I will also consider some of the heirs of Joyce’s revolution in form-content relations.

Bio:
Derek Attridge is the author or editor of thirty books published over nearly fifty years on such topics as literary theory, poetic form, South African literature, and the work of James Joyce. His most recent publications include The Experience of Poetry: From Homer’s Listeners to Shakespeare’s Readers (Oxford, 2019) and the co-edited collections Literature and Event: Twenty-First Century Reformulations (Routledge, 2021); and The Work of Reading: Literary Criticism in the 21st Century (Palgrave, 2021). Forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press in 2023 is Forms of Fiction: Reading Modernist Innovation from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of York.