Joyce's Heirs

Joyce’s Heirs: Joyce’s Imprint on Recent Global Literatures Editor: Olga Fernández Vicente Co-editors: Mari Mar Boillos Pereira Richard Jorge Fernández Paulo Kortazar Billelabeitia CIP. Biblioteca Universitaria Joyce’s heirs [Recurso electrónico] : Joyce’s imprint recent global literatures / editor, Olga Fernández Vicente … [et al.]. – Datos. – Bilbao : Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Argital- pen Zerbitzua = Servicio Editorial, [2019]. 1 recurso en línea : PDF (167 p.) Modo de acceso: World Wide Web. ISBN: 978-84-9860-727-7. 1. Joyce, James,1882-1941 - Crítica e interpretación. I. Fernández Vicente, Olga, ed. (0.034)820JOYCE1.06 JOY Debekatuta dago liburu hau osorik edo partez kopiatzea, bai eta tratamendu tronikoz, mekanikoz, fotokopiaz, erregistroz edo beste edozein eratara, baldin eta copyrightaren jabeek ez badute horretarako baimena aldez aurretik eta idatziz eman. UPV/EHUko Euskara Zerbitzuak sustatua eta zuzendua, Euskarazko ikasmaterial- gintza sustatzeko deialdiren bitartez. Diseño de portada: Susana Jodra © Euskal Herriko Unibertsitateko Argitalpen Zerbitzua Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad del País Vasco ISBN: 978-84-9860-727-7 Foreword We would like to give special thanks to the research team in LAIDA Literatura eta Identitatea Ikerketa Taldea. Their contribution, which can be found in https://www.ehu. eus/es/web/laida/helburua, to the research in Basque literature in a bilingual context, the relationship between literature, gender and identity, and the construction of national identities has been, and is, a paramount example of expertise and dedication. The editors would also like to express their heartfelt thanks to Dr Jon Kortazar Uriarte, professor of Basque Literature at UPV/EHU and main researcher for the LAIDA team, for his invaluable help, without which this volume would have never been published. It has been a real pleasure and an honour to work alongside such a reputed scholar. We are, indeed, indebted to his savoir-faire, his humble approach to all things literary, and his dedication to and passion for literature in general and the Basque Country in particular. Eskerrik asko, bihotz-bihotzez! 3 Joyce’s Heirs. Joyce’s Imprint on Recent Global Literatures Contents Introduction Richard Jorge, Olga Fernández Vicente ....................................... 5 “James Joyce IS MY Man”: Kate O’Brien and James Joyce Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka .............................................. 8 Escaping the Boundaries of Modernism: James Joyce’s Continuous Search for Independence Olga Fernández Vicente ................................................... 24 Baleful distractions: the female body in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ and Bram Stoker’s ‘The Coming Home of Abel Behenna’ Richard Jorge Fernández .................................................. 43 The Terrible Mother Archetype in James Joyce’s “The Boarding House” and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer Charlie Jorge Fernández ................................................... 56 ‘The father without a son be not a father, can the son who has not a father be a son?’: The Quest for Paternity in Ulysses and Harry Potter Nerea Unda ............................................................. 73 The Book of the Dead in Finnegans Wake: An Approach Through Joyce’s Late Additions Ricardo Navarrete Franco ................................................. 89 The Catholic Mass in Finnegans Wake’s “The Ondt and the Gracehoper” Macarena Martín Martínez ................................................ 104 Learning about Superstitions and Irish Beliefs Trough Ulysses Guillermina Heredia Campos .............................................. 118 An Interview with Xabier Olarra, Translator of Ulysses into the Basque Language Olga Fernández Vicente ................................................... 130 Joyceday Joxe Mari Iturralde ....................................................... 138 4 Joyce’s Heirs. Joyce’s Imprint on Recent Global Literatures Introduction he figure of James Joyce is intangible, an almost all-encompassing figure whose height and breadth bypasses countries, continents and even time constraints and Tlimitations. Many writers have confessed to their being indebted to his works and readings, as have many scholars over the years. Declan Kiberd, in his famed Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (1995), wrote that Joyce’s Ulysses is “one of the first major literary utterances in the modern period by an artist who spoke for a newly liberated period”. However, not everything said about Joyce has always been praising; his contemporary, D.H. Lawrence, is known to have criticised him on the basis of his Biblical references or his journalistic-indebted narrative, which he defined as “old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new”. Many more writers have, however, found inspiration in Joyce’s narratives and stories than not. Joyce Carrol Oates praised Ulysses assuring that every page “was wonderful and repays the effort” of its reading while George Orwell confessed, after having read Joyce’s masterpiece, that it created in him an inferiority complex. Admirers and detractors aside, it is clear that Joyce’s figure is larger than life; almost as a reversed parallelism to D.H. Lawrence’s criticism, Joyce can be pronounced a figure of almost Biblical proportions: one may like him or despise him; however, no one is left indifferent by it. This lofty, academic assertion has its more mundane mirror image in the widespread myth that all Dubliners, upon entering a conversation of literary dimensions, will firmly state their own opinions on the Dubliner’s work, even discuss some of his passages, only to later acknowledge (perhaps in the intimacy of one of those public houses Joyce himself so well depicted) that they have not read the book at all, at all. This, rather than taking away literary value form Joyce’s work, proves how all-encompassing and ever-arching his work can be; discussed alike by high- ranking academics and Dublin taxi drivers, Joyce’s oeuvre is an ever-continuing metaphor of life and its essence at the core of the city which he left but always inhabited. Inspired by the diversity which the Dubliner’s work has always fostered in readers and critics alike, the idea to celebrate a gathering which would rejoice in the different approaches, readings and perspectives which his masterpieces invite started to germinate. Of course, one should always start by home. Home has, however, changed enough to include wider perspectives, silenced voices or repressed longings. Aintzane Legarreta’s research thus provided a stepping stone from which to see the work of Joyce in the mirror of a feminine approach. Her comparative study of Kate O’Brien and James Joyce proved 5 Joyce’s Heirs. Joyce’s Imprint on Recent Global Literatures INTRODUCTION inspiring and insightful in bringing up their common approaches to repressed sexuality or the influence of Catholicism on their writings. But one cannot forget that Joyce was a modernist. Modernism is, without a doubt, at the kernel of Joyce’s work; or better said, Joyce is at the centre of Modernism. Be it as it may, like many other Modernist writers, Joyce sought to escape from the well-grounded preconceptions dominating much of his contemporary society. This escape had to be both psychological and physical, for Joyce would leave Ireland for good, but, as Dr Olga Fernández Vicente reminds us “departing Ireland released Joyce from aesthetic, political and family oppression, and provided him with artistic deliverance”. Joyce needed freedom to create, to work and to live. However, it would be far-fetched to think that in doing so he was alone. As Dr Fernández Vicente asserts, Joyce could never free himself from Ireland. And that is just as it should be for one’s present cannot be explained without looking back; we are as much a product of our actions as we are of our past, individual or collective. It was with this idea in mind that Dr Richard Jorge first came up with a possible comparison between Joyce’s works and one of his antecedents—Bram Stoker. Disparity in narrative style and even genre is what first comes to mind. However, one delves deeper in the similarities and differences, the traits and common intricacies that both writers shared, one quickly comes to the conclusion that there are perhaps more things in common between these two writers than at first meets the eye. It is in their common deployment of the female figure, in their interpretation and realisation of national anxieties, that these two writers come together as one. The female as the nation; the female as the representation of male and colonial anxieties. However, Joyce’s links to an Irish tradition can be taken further back in time. More precisely to the eighteenth century. Dr Charlie Jorge takes us in a journey—almost quite a literary stretch—in drawing the influences of Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer on Joyce’s ‘the Boarding House.’ Nor do we leave the female for, as Dr Charlie Jorge shows us, there is a darker, more threatening side to the interpretation of Mother Ireland than later comparisons would suggest. Indeed, the comparisons established between Joyce and Maturin’s works prove that the Gothic genre not only is alive and kicking but that it never ceased to cast its perennial shadow over subsequent generations of Irish writers. Joyce’s work, however, does not look back on its past. Nor is it exclusively associated with Ireland. Indeed, if the Emerald Isle is the roots, the branches are

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