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Materialities of the Mental in the Works of James Joyce
James Joyce’s evocations of his characters’ thoughts are often inserted within a commonplace that regards the mind as an interior space, referred to as the ‘inward turn’ in literary scholarship since the mid-twentieth century. Emma-Louise Silva reassesses this vantage point by exploring Joyce’s modernist fiction through the prism of 4E – or embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive – cognition. By merging the 4E framework with cognitive-genetic narratology, an innovative form of inquiry that brings together the study of the dynamics of writing processes and the study of cognition in relation to narratives, Modernist Minds: Materialities of the Mental in the Works of James Joyce delves into the material stylistic choices through which Joyce’s approaches to mind depiction evolved.

Abstract

The third chapter discusses some of the key ideas related to cognitive narratology and genetic criticism. The section on cognitive narratology zooms in on how the mindscapes Joyce created in his modernist fiction require specific narratological understandings of consciousness, characterisation, focalisation, and storyworlds. These terms are tailored to suit the needs of Joycean technicalities and the innovative rendering of content and form in his modernist works. As for genetic criticism, the gradual process of elaboration that was involved in Joyce’s literary mind-shaping is observable in the author’s paper workshop. This section establishes why the vantage point of genetic criticism is a fruitful way of approaching Joyce’s oeuvre by engaging with notes, drafts, letters, and so on. Then, the advantages of merging cognitive narratology and genetic criticism are discussed.

In: Modernist Minds

Abstract

The fourth chapter uses 4E-based cognitive-genetic narratology to demonstrate how Joyce evokes thoughts in Ulysses that are prompted by visible, audible, and tangible stimuli, cultural and linguistic events, and other characters in the storyworld. These analyses feature reflections on how Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom were discussed in the press in the early twentieth century, providing contextualisation of Joyce’s techniques of characterisation. By exploring the materialities of Joyce’s texts, i.e., the material stylistic choices through which his strategies for evoking fictional minds evolved, this chapter traces correlations that criss-cross throughout his works, both on an inter-novel level and on an inter-episodic level. These linkages, which heighten the complexity of the protagonists’ characterisation, are examined by considering Joyce’s process of mind-shaping on paper.

In: Modernist Minds

Abstract

The second chapter starts with a discussion of René Descartes’ dualist legacy, followed by an overview of twentieth-century reactions to Cartesian dualism, such as behaviourism, identity theory, functionalism, fictionalism, and computationalism. This section then shifts to the more recent 4E approaches in the field of philosophy of mind, which view the mind as interlinked with body and world, a vantage point that is opposed to internalist understandings of the mind. By establishing these shifting understandings of the mind, the need for a reassessment of the ‘inward turn’ in reflections on modernist mind depiction becomes apparent: considerations of the mind as an interior space are no longer valid, especially when it comes to Joyce’s oeuvre.

In: Modernist Minds

Abstract

The prologue of this book delves into why ‘Joycean minds’ are illuminating examples of wider cultural models of mental experience, by examining what is meant by ‘the mind’ and ‘mental states’ and by providing examples featuring in James Joyce’s oeuvre to illustrate such concepts. By arguing why Joyce’s works are so congenial for reassessing the so-called ‘inward turn’ of modernist fiction on the basis of the nexus between cognitive narratology, genetic criticism, and 4E approaches to the mind, the prologue indicates how the Joycean texts examined in this book present particularly revealing case studies for genetic critics, narrative theorists, and philosophers who are interested in the broader conceptual issues explored here.

In: Modernist Minds

Abstract

By zooming out in relation to the analyses of Joyce’s protagonists’ minds through the lens of 4E-based cognitive-genetic narratology, the epilogue of this book concludes that the discourse of the ‘inward turn’ can no longer be upheld as the best way to approach the minds of Joyce’s characters. The author’s mind-evoking strategies portray cognitive and affective processes that are more often than not world-involving, and not necessarily ‘inward turning’. Joyce’s concentration on the faculties of the mind and his formally innovative depiction of thought processes enable him to display his protagonists in a fused interconnectedness with their surroundings.

In: Modernist Minds
Joyce’s art is an art of idiosyncratic transformation, revision and recycling. More specifically, the work of his art lies in the act of creative transformation: the art of the paste that echoes Ezra Pound’s urge to make it new. The essays in this volume examine various modalities of the Joycean aesthetic metamorphosis: be it through the prism of Joyce engaging with other arts and artists, or through the prism of other arts and artists engaging with the Joycean aftermath. We have chosen the essays that best show the range of Joycean engagement with multiple artistic domains in a variety of media. Joyce’s art is multiform and protean: influenced by many, it influences many others.
In: James Joyce and the Arts
In: James Joyce and the Arts
In: James Joyce and the Arts