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- Title
"Circe" and Surrealism: Joyce and the Avant-Garde.
- Authors
Flynn, Catherine
- Abstract
Writing the 'Circe' episode of "Ulysses" in Paris, Joyce expressed interest in the play "Les Mamelles de Tirésias," for which Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term "surrealist." "Les Mamelles" husband's birth of 40,050 children in a single day is paralleled not only in Bloom's instantaneous production of eight metallic children but also in the episode's unceasing generative energy. If the massive production of children in "Les Mamelles" is purposive, the production of "Circe" is out of control, embodying both the pleasures and the dangers of industrial capitalism, an endless production of commodities that seems to offer change but generates instead a phantasmagoria. Reading "Circe" and "Les Mamelles" alongside Walter Benjamin's understanding of the effects of the capitalist city—explored in the "Arcades Project" in Paris while Joyce was finishing "Ulysses" there—allows us to see how "'Circe" moves beyond the limits of Surrealism and offers another way of conceiving of the avant-garde.
- Subjects
PARIS (France); FRANCE; SURREALISM; LES Mamelles de Tiresias (Theatrical production); APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume, 1880-1918; BENJAMIN, Walter, 1892-1940; CAPITALISM; PHANTASMAGORIA; COMMERCIAL products; 20TH century (Literary period)
- Publication
Journal of Modern Literature, 2011, Vol 34, Issue 2, p121
- ISSN
0022-281X
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2979/jmodelite.34.2.121