Imagining Joyce and Derrida: Between Finnegans Wake and Glas by Peter Mahon
English | 2007 | ISBN: 0802092497, 9780802092496 | 415 Pages | PDF | 3.51 MB
English | 2007 | ISBN: 0802092497, 9780802092496 | 415 Pages | PDF | 3.51 MB
How is meaning in one text shaped by another? Does intertextuality consist of more than simple references by one text to another? In Imagining Joyce and Derrida , Peter Mahon explores these questions through a comparative study of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and the deconstructive texts of Jacques Derrida, with a particular emphasis on Glas . Mahon's reading of these works insists on thinking through Derrida's 'Hegelian' manner of understanding Joyce. Using key texts of Vico, Kant, and Heidegger, Mahon develops a theoretical framework that allows him to theorize and re-conceptualize the intertextuality between Joyce and Derrida in terms of the imagination. In order to test the flexibility of this imaginative framework, Mahon applies it to a sustained comparison of Finnegans Wake and Derrida's under-appreciated masterwork, Glas . In so doing, Mahon reconfigures and expands the intertextual terrain between Joyce and Derrida beyond a simple catalogue of those instances where Derrida cites Joyce. Engaging and innovative, this erudite study makes an important contribution to literary critical theory.