James Joyce's techno-poetics / Donald F. Theall.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Theall explores the role of science, mathematics, and technology in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He argues that Joyce's paramodern poetic practice has important implications for a wide variety of subsequent cultural and theoretical movements.

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CHOICE Review

Not for the timid, traditional, or unscientific reader, this book extends Joyce's claim to be an "engineer" and promotes the technology of cyberspace. Influenced by Marshall McLuhan and capitalizing on Joyce's reference to himself as "the greatest engineer," and with the support of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, Theall (Trent Univ.) analyzes the mechanics and the machines in Finnegans Wake to demonstrate that the progression of the Wake from tribalism to city skyscrapers includes "communication machinery," the "technomechanical," and the "machining of memory" (television, radio, film, and modern science). Theall is unable to let go of the disproved "dream" basis for the Wake (for which "wakese" has replaced "dream machine") and speaks of the language as "hypertextuality and hypermedia." The more comprehendable and informative chapters in the last half examine the Eucharist and light, Anna Livia as eternal geomater, Wyndham Lewis, Quantum theory, and Saint Patrick and the Archdruid. Chapter titles do not consistently clarify the contents. This book is best used with Thomas Jackson Rice's Joyce, Chaos, and Complexity (CH, Jul'97). Recommended for graduate libraries. G. Eckley; emeritus, Drake University