Description

Platt places Finnegans Wake in precise historical conditions and explores Joyce's engagement with European fascism. Len Platt charts a fresh approach through one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. Using original archival research and detailed close readings, he outlines Joyce's literary response to the racial discourse of twentieth-century politics. Len Platt charts a fresh approach through one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. Using original archival research and detailed close readings, he outlines Joyce's literary response to the racial discourse of twentieth-century politics. Len Platt charts a fresh approach through one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century literature. Using original archival research and detailed close readings, he outlines Joyce's literary response to the racial discourse of twentieth-century politics. Platt's account is the first to position Finnegans Wake in precise historical conditions and to explore Joyce's engagement with European fascism. Race, Platt claims, is a central theme for Joyce, both in terms of the colonial and post-colonial conflicts between the Irish and the British, and in terms of its use by the extreme right. It is in this context that Joyce's engagement with race, while certainly a product of colonial relations, also figures as a wider disputation with rationalism, capitalism and modernity. 1. Joyce and race: introductory; 2. 'No such race': Finnegans Wake and the Aryan myth; 3. Celt, Aryan and Teuton; 4. 'Our darling breed': the Wake and social Darwinism; 5. Atlanta-Arya: theosophy, race and the Wake; 6. 'Hung Chung Egglyfella': staged race in Ulysses and the Wake; 7. 'And the prankquean pulled a rosy one': filth, Fascism and the family; 8. Race and reading: a conclusion; Notes; Index. Review of the hardback: 'Platt carves out a fascinating new area of enquiry, and in so doing offers an excitingly fresh 'European reading of the Wake' … Platt's illuminating study is full of fascinating insights regarding the nature of Joyce's engagement with contemporary political matters. … Joyce, Race and Finnegans Wake offers a valuable new reading of a largely uncharted area of Joyce's last work.' Review of English Studies