Joyce's Messianism
Subtitle: Dante, Negative Existence, And The Messianic Self
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: January 21, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 180
ISBN-13: 9781570035524
Subjects: Novels, other prose & writers: from c 1900 -; Negation (Logic) in literature; General; Dante Alighieri,; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; Literary Criticism; British Isles; Italian influences; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Criticism and interpretation; Negativity (Philosophy) in literature; 1265-1321; 1882-1941; English fiction; Joyce, James,
First sentence: According to John Freccero, Dante's Paradiso is made possible by maculae, the shadows of appearances that are not really there but allow one to see, by contrast, that which would remain invisible were it not for the chiaroscuro provoked and permitted by these shadows.
Description: "In his study of negative existence and how it affects James Joyce's principal characters, Gian Balsamo joins the ongoing debate about the Irish writer's relationship to Dante and considers the centrality of messianism to that relationship. Finding in Dante a negative poetics that becomes a model for Joyce, Balsamo suggests that the inception and cessation of life - two occurrences that conventionally are deemed impossible to experience personally and directly - typically frame the existential experiences of Joyce's main characters. Balsamo perceives Stephen, Leopold, and Shem as messianic figures because they rebel against this convention, clustering their lives around the very events of inception and burial."--Jacket.