James Joyce and Cinematicity

'Williams explores the cinematicity of Joyce's writing not only as an expression of the 'Modernism' of contemporaneous film practices but also of long established media familiar to him from boyhood-shadow theatre, the kaleidoscope and stereoscope, chronophotography, panoramas and above all the magic lantern. A fascinating and thought-provoking study.'
Jeremy Brooker, Chairman, Magic Lantern Society

Investigates how the cinematic tendency of Joyce's writing developed from media predating film

In this book, Keith Williams explores Victorian culture's emergent 'cinematicity' as a key creative driver of Joyce's experimental fiction, showing how Joyce's style and themes share the cinematograph's roots in Victorian optical entertainment and science. The book reveals Joyce's references to optical toys, shadowgraphs, magic lanterns, panoramas, photographic analysis and film peepshows. Close analyses of his works show how his techniques elaborated and critiqued their effects on modernity's 'media-cultural imaginary'.

Keith Williams is Reader in English at the University of Dundee and Director of the Centre for Critical and Creative Cultures.

Cover image: slide 6 of Love's Old Sweet Song (James Bamforth, set of 8 lantern slides, 1899). Private Collection; photo by Robert MacDonald. Reproduced by permission from Lucerna, the Magic Lantern Web Resource, www.slides.uni-trier.de

Cover design: Richard Budd

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ISBN 978-1-4744-0248-4
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