Of Canons, Colonies, and Critics: The Ethics and Politics of Postcolonial Joyce Studies

Abstract

In the canon of modern English literature, there is perhaps no more ‘canonical’ a figure than James Joyce. Such literary and academic canonization has produced a massive Joyce scholarly industry, with a significant and voluminous display of published scholarship, textbooks, college courses, doctoral dissertations, faculty appointments, and scholarly symposia. Joyce’s canonical status has been to large degree achieved over the past six decades through the academy’s estimation of Joyce as a revolutionary prose innovator within a High Modernist context. But in recent years critical studies of Joyce have begun a radical re-evaluation, compellingly re-presenting Joyce instead as an anti-canonical, anti-imperialist, and even nationalist writer — via the lenses of contemporary postcolonial theory and cultural criticism. To the ‘canonical Joyce’ we have responded with the ‘postcolonial Joyce’. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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