Editor of the e-journal Genetic Joyce Studies; is preparing the first Dutch translation of Joyce's letters, to be published by Querido. The edition will contain a large selection of letters related to Joyce's writing process, annotated with specific attention to the genesis of his major works. Some of the letters will be published for the first time in any language. Together with Edward Vanhoutte, he is working on an electronic transcription of the 'red-backed' notebook (BL 47471b).
Ph.D dissertation (1999):
TEXTUAL AWARENESS:
A GENETIC APPROACH TO THE LATE WORKS OF JAMES JOYCE,
MARCEL PROUST, AND THOMAS MANN
A comparative genetic investigation into the writing process of Finnegans
Wake, À la recherche du temps perdu, and Doktor Faustus. The metafictional
nature of these three literary works is the starting point of Part One
(“Genetic and Literary Criticism”): a genetic analysis of the instances
in these novels where the writing process becomes thematic. In Part Two
(“Genetic and Textual Criticism”) a survey of French, German, and Anglo-American
editorial traditions is followed by a discussion of several issues in textual
criticism on the basis of the works discussed in Part One and the metaphors
employed by authors and textual critics. A key issue in this confrontation
between literary and textual criticism is the tension between the finished
and the unfinished. This tension manifests itself most poignantly in these
self-reflexive encyclopaedic novels in which the Faustian ambition to comprehend
everything is always accompanied by the—essentially textual—awareness of
the impossibility of such an enterprise: whatever the “essence of things”
one tries to unveil, it is re-veiled (with text) by the very attempt to
do so. This genetic analysis therefore aims at a rapprochement between
literary and textual criticism.
dirk.vanhulle@ua.ac.be
Gert Morreel
Gert Morreel has never met an encyclopedia he did not like. Thankfully, his doctoral dissertation focuses on the relationship between Joyce's unique brand of encyclopedism and other (fictional and non-fictional) encyclopedic projects between the wars. In the process, he hopes to rid the term "encyclopedism" of its vagueness by reconstructing the history of not just its epistemological but also its political significance. Meanwhile he edits the Gnantwerp Gazette and generally tries to make himself useful at the Center.
Ph.D. dissertation (1997) on the poetics of silence in Dante, Mallarmé and Joyce (completed May, 1997). These three writers are normally assigned (and occasionally in a pejorative manner) the rubric of "difficulty" and "obscurity." Rather than attempt to restitute some notion of sense to these writers, either individually or collectively, I propose to examine how this apperceived "difficulty" is a direct function of a certain project of writing in which the possibility of a book ("tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir à un livre," Mallarmé) rests within a never-achievable economy of silence and fragmentation. In different ways each of these three writers "achieved" their respective projects of writing through an experience of writing as "inachievement." Central to this investigation will be the critical writings of Derrida, Bataille and Blanchot.
Excerpts from the first chapter
slote@uia.ua.ac.be
Ingeborg Landuyt, "'Words in Distress': A Genetic Investigation
into James Joyce's Early Work in Progress"
Ph.D. dissertation (1999). In the first half of 1924, Joyce gathered many diverse elements for his Work in Progress (later to become Finnegans Wake) in notebooks VI.B.06, 01 and 16, some of which were used in subsequent drafts. My doctoral dissertation will deal with these three notebooks and the chapters of Finnegans Wake written or modified during this period (especially I.5, I.7, I.8, II.4 and III.1-2). This genetic study will proceed from a complete transcription of these notebooks which will then be annotated, and where possible the sources for the notes will be indicated. The transcriptions will also be thoroughly cross-referenced to the appropriate drafts and to the end-text of Finnegans Wake.
Beschrijving van de dissertatie in het Nederlands
landuyt@uia.ua.ac.be
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