The memory of text - the text of memory: a study of selected works by James Joyce

This study focuses on the development of memory with regard to the textual evolution of Joyce's works from Dubliners to Ulysses. My hypothesis is centered on the idea that in the Joycean narrative, structures of memory are fabricated as much through aspects relating to textual organisation as to the narrative representation of character consciousness. The basis of my analysis is formed by close readings of a selection of Joyce's works. A critical framework against which to read Joyce's engagement with the "textualisation" of memory processes is provided by some key works associated with the "cultural climate" within which Joyce worked, such as texts by Freud and Bergson. In reviewing the recent critical debate, this study sets out to establish the theoretical setting of the topic and relates it to the practice of textual analysis. My approach throughout chapters two to seven delineates a conceptual framework which differentiates between character memory and textual memory. I consider Joyce's works in terms of various paradigms of remembering and forgetting through a series of critical readings. The objective is to trace the poetics of memory in Joyce, and to show how processes of recollection and forgetting can be read in terms of writing and of textual production.