Beating the Bounds

Excess and Restraint in Joyce's Later Works
Examines the role of boundaries and limits in James Joyce’s later works, primarily Finnegans Wake but also Ulysses and other texts. Building on the ideas of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, and scholar Fritz Senn, Roy Benjamin explains and reconciles Joyce’s contrary tendencies to establish and transgress limits.
Exploring the role of boundaries and limits in the writing of James Joyce

Beating the Bounds examines the role of boundaries and limits in James Joyce’s later works, primarily Finnegans Wake but also Ulyssesand other texts. Building on the ideas of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, and scholar Fritz Senn, Roy Benjamin explains and reconciles Joyce’s contrary tendencies to establish and transgress limits.

Benjamin begins by contrasting Joyce’s exploration of the artificial impositions of ritual and political power with the writer’s attention to natural boundaries of rivers and mountains. The next section considers sexual, spiritual, and interpersonal boundaries in the Wake. Benjamin then discusses how Joyce simultaneously affirms and undermines the limits of philosophy, geometry, and aesthetics. The final section covers Joyce’s representation of the boundaries imposed in cosmogonic myths, the collision between the bounded medieval world and the boundless world of modern science, and the drive to escape from the boundaries of place.

In this detailed and original analysis, Benjamin demonstrates that in Joyce’s writing, the tendency to disintegrate into chaos is countered by an urge to impose order. Benjamin’s close readings put an abundance of subjects in conversation through the concept of limits, showing the Wake’s relevance to many different fields of thought.

A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles.

Pages: 266

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.