Repetition and Circularity in Joyce and Vico
Keywords:
Joyce, Vico, Philosophy and Literature, Philosophy of History, Epic and Novel
Abstract
The paper examines the ways in which Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake is the repetition of Vico’s Enlightenment philosophical classic the New Science. If there is repetition then there is a circle of some kind in which each text leads into the other. Each of these texts makes an issue of both repetition and circularity. In the case of Vico, these apply to history, while in the case of Joyce these refer to the construction of his novel. The argument is that the repetition and circularity these texts deal with is repetition with change. This provides a way of understanding the relation between the texts. Finnegans Wake is not the illustrative repetition of the New Science. The New Science is an important structuring source for Finnegans Wake, but not a complete and final schema. Joyce creates a flow which flattens out the historical stages articulated by Vico.References
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Atherton, J.S. (1952): ‘Lewis Carroll and Finnegans Wake’, “English Studies”, volume 33,
number 1, pp. 1-15.
Auerbach, E. (1948): ‘Vico and Aesthetic Historicism’, “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism”, volume 8, number 2), pp. 110-118.
Beckett, S., M. Brion et al (1939): Our Exagmination around his Factification for
Incamination of Work in Progress. London: Faber & Faber.
Carroll, L. (1895): ‘What the Tortoise said to Achilles’, “Mind”, volume 4, number 14, pp.
278-280.
Carroll, L. (2000): The Annotated Alice. Ed. by Martin Gardner. New York NY: W.W.
Norton.
Derrida, J. (2013): ‘Two Words for Joyce’. Tr. by G. Bennington. In
Derrida and Joyce, ed. by A. J. Mitchell and S. Slote. Albany NY: State
University Press of New York.
Donzelli, M. (1981): ‘Le conception de l’histoire de J.B. Vico et son interprétation par J.
Michelet’, “Annales historiques de la Révolution française”, volume 246, pp.
633-658.
Ferguson, A. (1995): An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Ed. by F. Oz-
Salzberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frege, G. (1984): Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. Ed.
B. McGuinness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Gadamer, H.-G. (2004 revised second edition): Truth and Method. Trans. by
J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. London and New York NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Gilbert, S. (1955): James Joyce’s Ulysses. A Study. Ney York NY: Vintage Books/
Random House.
Horkheimer, M. (1993): ‘Vico and Mythology’ in Between Philosophy and Social Science:
Selected Early Writings in Contemporary German Social Thought. Trans. by G.
F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer and J. Torpey. Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press.
Humboldt, W. von (1999): On Language. Ed. by M. Losonsky. Trans. by
P. Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hutton, P. (1976): ‘Vico’s Theory of History and the French Revolutionary Tradition’,
“Journal of the History of Ideas”, volume 37, number 2, pp. 241-256.
Joyce, J. (1971): Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Joyce, J. (1975): Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber.
Joyce, J. (2000): Dubliners. London: Penguin Books.
Kierkegaard, S.A. (1987): Either/Or: Part I. Ed. and Trans. by H.V. Hong
and E.H. Hong.
Mali, J. (2012): The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History: From Jules Michelet to
Isaiah Berlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McLuhan, E. (1997): The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Miner, R. C. (2002): Vico, Genealogist of Modernity. Notre Dame IN: University of
Notre Dame Press.
Pascal, B. (1995): Pensées and Other Writings. Ed. by A. Levi. Trans. by
H. Levi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Piette, A. (1996): Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce,
Beckett. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Platt, L. (2008): ‘Madam Blavatsky and Theosophy in Finnegans Wake: An Annotated
List’, James Joyce Quarterly 45(2): 281-300.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1998): Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related
to Music. Ed. and Trans. by J. T. Scott. Hanover NH: University Press of
New England.
Russell, B. (1992): Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950. Ed. by R.
C. Marsh. London: Routledge.
Said, E. (1975): Beginnings: Intentions and Method. New York NY: Basic Books.
Singer, T. C. (1990), ‘Riddles, Silence, and Wonder: Joyce and Wittgenstein
Encountering the Limits of Language’, “ELH”, volume 57, number, pp. 459-484.
Smith, A. (1982): Lectures on Jurisprudence. Ed. by R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael and
P.G. Stein. Indianapolis IN: Libery Fund.
Tindell, W. Y. (1959): A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce. New York NY: Noonday
Press.
Valante, J. (1987): ‘Beyond Truth and Freedom: The New Faith of Joyce and
Nietzsche’, “James Joyce Quarterly”, volume 25, number 1, pp. 87-103.
Vico, G. (1975),: The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Trans. by T.
G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Volpone, A. (2018): “‘[The] Buzz in his Braintree, the Tic of His Conscience’: Consciousness, Language and the Brain in Finnegans Wake” in S. Belluc and V. Bénéjam
(eds.) Cognitive Joyce. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 229-250.
White, H. (1976): “Review of ‘Vico: A Study of the New Science by Leon Pompa’”,
“History and Theory”, volume 15, number 2), pp. 186-202.
White, H. (1983): ‘Vico and the Radical Wing of Structuralist/Poststructuralist
Thought Today’, “New Vico Studies”, volume 1, pp. 63-68.
Wittgenstein, L. (2001): Philosophical Investigations. Trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Yeats, W.B. (1978): A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision. Ed. by G. M. Harper and
W. K. Hood. London: Macmillan.
Published
2020-01-08
Section
Monographica
