Beating the Bounds

Exploring the role of boundaries and limits in thewriting of James Joyce

Beating the Bounds examines the roleof boundaries and limits in James Joyce's later works, primarily Finnegans Wake but also Ulysses and other texts. Building on theideas of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, and scholar FritzSenn, Roy Benjamin explains and reconciles Joyce's contrary tendencies toestablish and transgress limits.

Benjaminbegins by contrasting Joyce's exploration of the artificial impositions ofritual and political power with the writer's attention to natural boundaries ofrivers and mountains. The next section considers sexual, spiritual, and interpersonalboundaries in the Wake. Benjamin thendiscusses how Joyce simultaneously affirms and undermines the limits ofphilosophy, geometry, and aesthetics. The finalsection covers Joyce's representation of the boundaries imposed in cosmogonicmyths, the collision between the bounded medieval world and the boundless worldof modern science, and the drive to escape from the boundaries of place.

Inthis detailed and original analysis, Benjamin demonstrates that inJoyce's writing, the tendency to disintegrate intochaos is countered by an urge to impose order. Benjamin's close readings put anabundance of subjects in conversation through the concept of limits, showingthe Wake's relevance to manydifferent fields of thought.

Avolume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles