Overview

James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film reappraises the lines of influence said to exist between Joyce's writing and early cinema and provides an alternative to previous psychoanalytic readings of Joyce and film. Through a compelling combination of historical research and critical analysis, Cleo Hanaway-Oakley demonstrates that Joyce, early film-makers, and phenomenologists (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in particular) share a common enterprise: all are concerned with showing, rather than explaining, the 'inherence of the self in the world'. Instead of portraying an objective, neutral world, bereft of human input, Joyce, the film-makers, and the phenomenologists present embodied, conscious engagement with the environment and others: they are interested in the world-as-it-is-lived and transcend the seemingly-rigid binaries of seer/seen, subject/object, absorptive/theatrical, and personal/impersonal. This book re-evaluates the history of body- and spectator-focused film theories, placing Merleau-Ponty at the centre of the discussion, and considers the ways in which Joyce may have encountered such theories. In a wealth of close analyses, Joyce's fiction is read alongside the work of early film-makers such as Charlie Chaplin, Georges Méliès, and Mitchell and Kenyon, and in relation to the philosophical dimensions of early-cinematic devices such as the Mutoscope, the stereoscope, and the panorama. By putting Joyce's literary work--Ulysses above all--into dialogue with both early cinema and phenomenology, this book elucidates and enlivens literature, film, and philosophy.

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9780198768913

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impressively researched, methodically-organised and, above all, admirably readable ... [this] monograph deserves to become a milestone in Joyce and film studies and I cannot recommend it highly enough. * Keith Williams, James Joyce Broadsheet * Reading Joyce back through a highly original synthesis of phenomenology, early cinema and film theory, this is a genuinely comparative study that challenges longstanding ideas around modernism and film, and points the way towards future studies of literary modernism that bring together history, philosophy and non- textual media forms. * Peter Adkins, Textual Practice *

impressively researched, methodically-organised and, above all, admirably readable ... [this] monograph deserves to become a milestone in Joyce and film studies and I cannot recommend it highly enough. * Keith Williams, James Joyce Broadsheet *

Author Information

Cleo Hanaway-Oakley was awarded her doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2013 after having completed a BA in English and Philosophy and an MA in Twentieth-century Literature at the University of Leeds. Her work is concerned with the interrelations between literature, philosophy, film, culture, and science. She is Founder and Chair of Oxford Phenomenology Network, an international group of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners interested in all aspects of phenomenological thought and practice. She currently works at the University of Oxford in the role of Knowledge Exchange Facilitator and as a tutor at various Oxford colleges.

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