The ideal reader suffering from the ideal insomnia

Joyce Papers & Essays

During its first incarnation from 1996–2009, the Brazen Head included links to every Joyce-related paper it could find. Today, sites such as JSTOR make this both impossible and unnecessary. This section of the Brazen Head is now dedicated to hosting Joyce-related papers and essays; although a few “legacy” links have been included. The collection has been organized alphabetically by author. If you would like the Brazen Head to host a Joyce-related paper or essay, please read our “submission guidelines” at the bottom of the page.

Papers

French Feminists and Anglo-Irish Modernists: Cixous, Kristeva, Beckett and Joyce
Birkett, Jennifer
A look at the work of Joyce and Beckett through the lens of French feminism. A revision of a lecture delivered at the University of Zaragoza in 1997.

Joyce’s Bad Words
Conley, Tim
A frank discussion of Joycean swearing, its evolution, and the meaning behind Mr. Joyce’s “Ibscenest” language.

His Cheeks Were Aflame: Masturbation, Sexual Frustration and Artistic Failure in Joyce’s Portrait of Stephen Dedalus
Hill, Sylvie
This paper explores the intersection of Stephen’s sexuality, specifically his masturbation, with his art. It attempts to prove that while sexual frustration was once conducive to his artistic production, it no longer motivates or inspires good writing by Ulysses. [PDF]

James Joyce and Avant-Garde Music
Klein, Scott W.
An excellent discussion of Joycean influences on Cage, Boulez, Berio, and others. Online at Ireland’s Contemporary Music Centre.

Pierre Menard, Author of Ulysses
Klein, Scott W.
Is Ulysses dated? Presented at the 17th Joyce Symposium, this paper argues for a Borgesian revaluation of Ulysses as a Modernist work.

Searching for Cyberspace: Joyce, Borges and Pynchon
O’Dwyer, Davin.
Davin O’Dwyer as Dublin-based writer and editor who has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Irish Times. In “Searching for Cyberspace,” O’Dwyer examines how the Internet is anticipated or prefigured in the works of Borges, James Joyce, and Thomas Pynchon. [PDF]

The Anxious Narrator of “Oxen of the Sun”
Schawber, Paul
Pychoanalyst Paul Schwaber examines how the phenomenon of birth affects the “male-gendered” narrator of “Oxen of the Sun.” Presented at the 17th International Joyce Symposium.

The Hieroglyphs of Engined Egypsians: Machines, Media and Modes of Communication in Finnegans Wake
Theall, Donald
Originally published in the 1991 Joyce Studies Annual, Theall gave the Brazen Head permission to host this venerable paper after it vanished from Trent University. Since then, it’s been placed on JSTOR, but you can still read it here for free.

Joyce’s Dubliners as Epiphanies
Valente, Francesca
This paper used to live on the Marshal McLuhan Studies site; but after that went down, it was relocated to the Brazen Head.

Understanding the (Net) Wake
Weiss, D.B.
This paper, a dissertation in philosophy from Trinity, uses Douglas Hofstadter, Umberto Eco and Marshall McLuhan to focus on Finnegans Wake as a “network.” In his rambling and humorous approach to the text, Weiss invokes everything from Buddhism to quantum physics, and makes some wonderful insights along the way. [The author of Lucky Wander Boy, Weiss later became a writer for HBO’s Game of Thrones. The Brazen Head has hosted this paper since 2000.]

Essays

Other Collections

JSTOR “Joyce” Search
Over 20,000 results. Go wild!

Project Muse “Joyce” Search
Project Muse is another archive of published papers.

Academia “Joyce” Search
Academia has over thousands of Joyce papers available as PDFs.

ReasearchGate “Joyce” Search
Ostensibly a database of scientific papers, ReasearchGate has many Joyce offerings.

Submission Guidelines

The Brazen Head is part of The Modern Word, a former literature site being “reconstructed” at Shipwreck Library. The Brazen Head is a James Joyce site, not a peer-reviewed journal. We offer a place to host academic papers and essays about Joyce. These works may have been previously published. We also accept works by non-academic writers.

General Guidelines
We prefer PDFs, which will be posted on the site as formatted. Of course, this offers the advantage of maintaining all images and typography. Microsoft Word or other such documents will be converted to HTML and posted as simple Web pages. An abstract is not necessary, but a few sentences for an “About the Author” would be nice.

Academic Papers
Previously-published papers should include information on their publishing history. All copyright issues should be secured in advance by the submitting writer—the Brazen Head makes no pretensions regarding copyrights. These are your papers, we are just hosting them!

Essays
Essays are shorter and less formal than papers, and may be submitted by writers from outside traditional academia.

If you’d like your work to be hosted here, please contact the Brazen Head!