Thought I'd try reading some of Joyce's work...

Thought I'd try reading some of Joyce's work, where'd be a good place to start with his books and how difficult will it be for me to get into them?

Ivy Day in the Committee Room. It's a short story from Dubliners.

Definitely start with Dubliners.
Then Portrait and if you liked it Ulysses.
It makes no sense to read him any other way than chronologically.

Maybe not the best story to start with for somebody who has limited knowledge of early 20th century Irish politics though.


Kind of derailing the thread but has anybody done their thesis on Joyce?

I'm soon to pick a topic for my master's thesis, which is going to determine much of what I study in the next two years so I don't want to pick a shitty subject that's been overdone or leads nowhere.

I was thinking of possibly approaching Joyce under the Dada angle but that's probably been done before, I see there's been a play (Travesties) by Tom Stoppard about fictitious conversations between Joyce and Tzara when they were exiles in Zurich.

Should I not do Joyce at all? I fear there's probably nothing of value I can bring to the matter. I could always do something about the Wake but I'm probably not up to the task.

That's a really good story, but just read all of Dubliners desu

Couldn't find Dubliners though I've got it on order, they do have Portrait though, would it be bad to skip Dubliners for the time being?

Yeah, although Portrait is already full of stream of consciousness passages so if you're not used to that it might be confusing.

Dubliners is written in a more 'classic' style and it's a nice introduction but you don't need to have read Dubliners to understand and enjoy Portrait.

I'd say it is kinda mandatory to have read Portrait before Ulysses though

Have you considered approaching from the Cubist perspective?

There was one chapter in Ulysses, where he presents the same physical incident in real time from multiple perspectives, similar to what the Cubists were doing around the same time. I think he was the first English writer to really capture that and I've not found any studies along those lines.

That's actually a good and helpful lead, thank you user. Indeed it seems that whilst he was a contemporary of the Dadaists it is unclear if there was mutual influence there.
I've found several press articles hinting at Joyce's influence over Cubism so there's definitely something to dig there, I'll look into it and start talking to my supervisor—after I found one but I think we have a Joyce specialist at my uni— about the viability of the whole thing and what direction I should give to my future work.

You're doing it totally wrong if you're just going to go with some gimmicky "perspective". If you want your work to not just be toilet paper (which it will be if you start talking about fucking cubism) your role as an intellectual is to focus on actually actively exploring why the text is important to your perspective of art, life and society.

Otherwise why are you wasting your time going to graduate studies?

Settle down, bro. It's just a masters thesis, not his magnum opus. It's meant to demonstrate his ability to perform scholarly work upon the text, the actual content of the project is less important than the fact that he can do it. Whatnew thing can be said in an MA thesis, anyway?

MAnon, if you're not already coming into it with an abiding interest, I'd say take a look through the past couple years of prominent Joyce scholarship and see if there's any trends or articles that interest you. You could position your project as furthering or a countering of whatever the other position is. If there's any possibilty of publication afterword, you'll at least be engaging recent scholarship.

NICE

FUCKING

THUMBNAIL

"My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."

All you need to know.

Every act of scholarship is only what you can reduce it to. It certainly may be his magnum opus at this rate

Why act like such a dick? Coming up with a project idea is a difficult task. And while Veeky Forums isn't the most likely place to get help, if the cubism suggestion spurs him toward something productive, then that's great. Scholarship isn't just a personal expression of why the text is "important to your perspective of art, life and society," but engaging in the ongoing discipline of textual study with those who are already doing it. That means understanding the ideas that are already in circulation and contributing to them. If there's a minor vein of work on Joyce that interrogates his relation to cubism and MAnon finds such scholarship interesting, then it'd be a fine place to start searching. I'd help more if I could, but Joyce isn't my field.

Prove by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.

y'havta reaD Joyce's Ulysses 20=times

>anything about Joyce hasn't been done before


Unless you consider the sehm asnuh, you may want to pick a different writer.

I thought this thread was dead

>You're doing it totally wrong if you're just going to go with some gimmicky "perspective".
I was afraid of that but it's actually much more difficult than I thought to come up with an actual engaging idea for a topic that will keep me motivated for 2 years.
I also knew asking Veeky Forums for useful advice wouldn't necessary lead up to anything but it doesn't hurt anybody.
You're coming off as a bit aggressive and condescending but hey, I'm not taking it personally because
>your role as an intellectual
Mate, I'm a long way from having the pretension of calling myself an 'intellectual'.

>actively exploring why the text is important to your perspective of art, life and society.

That sounds ambitious for a hundred pages long MA thesis but assuming you're right, how the fuck would you go about doing this?

>why are you wasting your time going to graduate studies

I need a master's degree to be eligible for passing the advanced teaching exam (Agrégation, it's very specific to the French education system, you wouldn't care about the details)

That's actual good advice, thanks user.
> What new thing can be said in an MA thesis, anyway?

That's what I was thinking. That being said, we've been briefed the other day and it was hinted that 'originality' would be much appreciated. Uni teachers don't want to supervise a student working on 'The failure of the American Dream' or 'The representation of women in Austen' or some shit like that.

But, like user saidI guess I'd have to be careful not to fall into the trap of choosing a 'gimmicky' project.

What's your magnum opus?

As a non-native English speaker, I feel like I'm probably not ready to produce scholar material on the Wake. Maybe I'm just a pussy who knows.

I think I'll have a talk with my (probable) supervisor, see what she thinks about the whole thing.

Oh and also, something I've had trouble with for most of my life : How do you specialise into something, how do you take that kind of decision?

I feel like I know a little about a lot of things and take interest in several cultural fields at once rather than knowing a lot about ONE thing (well, except football but that's irrelevant) which is kind of the heart of the dilemma I'm having at the moment.

Fuck me, I didn't know choosing a damn thesis topic would stir up this much soul-searching. I guess I'm just a fucking dilettante

Start with Dubliners. It's a pretty easy read IMO and a good introduction to his style, as well as being really fucking good. Then Portrait then Ulysses

>resurrecting a page 7 thread
>shiggy

I'm the fellow who recommended you peruse Joyce scholarship for ideas. I can tell you about my experience and choosing to specialise in a) literary study and b) Romantics.

I've studied humanities and bible/theology and wanted to teach. Literature as a subject brings me more pleasure than the other fields and disciplines I've studied (philosophy, sociology, anthropology, bible/theo) and think that I have an aptitude for it, a love of linguistics and how language is used, etc. The choice was natural. The decision to specialize in a particular historical field was more practical... studying early modern would require learning Latin and, having children and a full time job on top of university, I knew I wouldn't do well with it. I thought about modernist literature but didn't want to deal with Freud or Nietzsche in any involved way. Romantic poetry was a better and more practical fit for me. My own particular project developed in a similarly practical way... following interests and opportunities in order to get onto something productive.

I think it's better for you if your project is not something you're too emotionally involved with. I mean, you have to think it's worth doing at some level, but you also have to keep it at a distance. It's just a thing you're doing, not the greatest statement of the depths of your being.

Obviously start with Dubliners, and Dubliners won't be difficult at all

Don't discard Cubism just because of one user's opinion. It's at least worth considering. Could be interesting.