James Joyce and Absolute Music [Hardcover]

Drawing on draft manuscripts and other archival material,James Joyce and Absolute Music, explores Joyce's deep engagement with musical structure, and his participation in the growing modernist discourse surrounding 19th-century musical forms. Michelle Witen examines Joyce's claim of having structured the Sirens episode of his masterpiece,Ulysses, as afuga per canonem, and his changing musical project from his early works, such asDublinersandAPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Informed by a deep understanding of music theory and history, the book goes on to consider the pure music of Joyce's final work,Finnegans Wake. Demonstrating the importance of music to Joyce, this ground-breaking study reveals new depths to this enduring body of work.Witen shows herself to be a formidable textual scholar. She is also a wonderful reader of the Sirens episode, suggesting that the episode itself has a voice. James Joyce Literary SupplementMichelle Witenis Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Basel, Switzerland.Drawing on manuscript drafts and unpublished letters as well as musicological theory, this book explores the central importance of musical structure to Joyce's work, fromUlyssestoFinnegans Wake.

Series Editors' Preface

Introduction
1. Towards a Modernist Condition of Absolute Music
2. Joyce's Early Use of Music
3. Joyce'sfuga per canonem: A Case of Structure
4. Joyce'sfuga per canonem: A Case of Effect
5. Voided Fugue in Circe
6. It's Pure Music :Finnegans Wake
Conclusion: Codetta or Da Capo?
Appendix: Table of Transcribed Fragments from MS 36,639/7A + 7B

Bibliography
Index