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  • James Joyce and Genetic Criticism: Genesic Fields ed. by Genevieve Sartor
  • Patrick A. McCarthy (bio)
JAMES JOYCE AND GENETIC CRITICISM: GENESIC FIELDS, edited by Genevieve Sartor. European Joyce Studies 28. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi Press, 2018. viii+ 143 pp. €59.00, $71.00 paper.

In 1981, when Phillip F. Herring reviewed the James Joyce Archive, he found much to praise but added that so far the Archive had had little impact on Joyce scholarship.1 Today, the situation is different: thanks partly to the Archive, genetic criticism is now an important methodology in Joyce studies. James Joyce and Genetic Criticism is an outstanding addition to the field, which has evolved in ways that could not have been predicted in the early 1980s.

In her introduction, Genevieve Sartor comments that the essays in the collection study "genetic analysis in ways that evoke the contingent notion of 'evolution' implicit in its term, thereby studying how genetic inquiry directly intersects with interpretive instability" (4). And, as Robbert-Jan Henkes notes in "The at Wickerworks and the Case for Mute Authorisation," "unresolvability is exactly what this article is about" (31 n17). Henkes's discussion of the phrase "the at Wickerworks" in the Wake is illuminating (30-31).2 It derives from [End Page 436] Joyce's attempt to change "at Wickerworks" to "at the Wickerworks" in the galleys for transition in February 1928.3 According to Henkes, Joyce inserted "the" between "at" and "Wickerworks," but the printer misplaced the article, and Joyce never corrected that error. The phrase may still be found in Finnegans Wake, apart from Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon's "restored" version.4 Henkes makes a compelling argument against the "restoration" in this case, for Joyce appears to have approved the erroneous passage when he prepared the text for Tales Told of Shem and Shaun: Three Fragments of "Work in Progress."5 Not only did he leave "the at Wickerworks" untouched, apart from setting it off with commas, but he introduced an abbreviated version nearby and retained it in the Wake: "(t.a.W.)" (FW 289.14). Henkes guides us through problems like this, arguing that genetic critics should be aware that Joyce's concept of his book changed as he wrote it and that he often adopted typists' and printers' "mistakes, errors, faults and misreadings in his work" (34).

Tim Conley's "Revision Revisited" (11-24) is a witty introduction to essential problems of genetic criticism. He begins by comparing three texts: a Finnegans Wake notebook entry, "Somes amid a space + a whit [?] space it was"; a Wake passage, "Eins within a space and a wearywide space it wast ere wohned a Mookse" (FW 152.18-19); and the opening line of A Portrait of the Artist.6 Clearly they are related, but exactly how? If the first two passages are revisions of the passage in A Portrait, that does not mean we have found the point of origin for all of them, since A Portrait is itself a revision of Stephen Hero, "a damaged fossil" (12).7 Unless the first page of that Ur-Portrait surfaces, we will never know whether the opening of A Portrait parodies its predecessor. Conley argues that the relationship of two texts cannot always be described simply as "revision," for "[d]oing so neglects the fascinatingly multi-directional, recursive paths that Joyce's writing (and especially 'Work in Progress') takes" (18).

Dirk Van Hulle and Sartor also focus on the Wake. In "Editing the Wake's Genesis: Digital Genetic Criticism" (37-54), Van Hulle explores how the relationship between genetic criticism and scholarly editing might be reversed (37-38). As an example of how a digital edition of Finnegans Wake might serve as a source for genetic studies, he begins with the "Guiltless" copybook held at the British Library, which has notes for passages in six early chapters of Finnegans Wake.8 After an overview of the arguments for and against "restoration" (including Sam Slote's eloquent plea to "leave ill enough alone"9), Van Hulle uses the "Revered Letter" draft in the "Guiltless" copybook to demonstrate how a digital medium can aid scholars in tracing the history of Wake...

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