Books by Scarlett Baron
Routledge, 2019
Why was the term ‘intertextuality’ coined? Why did its first theorists feel the need to replace o... more Why was the term ‘intertextuality’ coined? Why did its first theorists feel the need to replace or complement those terms – of quotation, allusion, echo, reference, influence, imitation, parody, pastiche, among others – which had previously seemed adequate and sufficient to the description of literary relations? Why, especially in view of the fact that it is still met with resistance, did the new concept achieve such popularity so fast? Why has it retained its currency in spite of its inherent paradoxes? Since 1966, when Kristeva defined every text as a ‘mosaic of quotations’, ‘intertextuality’ has become an all-pervasive catchword in literature and other humanities departments; yet the notion, as commonly used, remains nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. This book seeks to shed light on this thought-provoking but treacherously polyvalent concept by tracing the theory’s core ideas and emblematic images to paradigm shifts in the fields of science, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics, focusing on the shaping roles of Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, and Bakhtin. In so doing, it elucidates the meaning of one of the most frequently used terms in contemporary criticism, thereby providing a much-needed foundation for clearer discussions of literary relations across the discipline and beyond.
'Strandentwining Cable' explores the works of two of the most admired and mythologized masters of... more 'Strandentwining Cable' explores the works of two of the most admired and mythologized masters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose: Gustave Flaubert (1822-1880) and James Joyce (1882-1941). This book is a study of their literary relationship. In six chronologically ordered chapters it carries out a detailed intertextual analysis of Joyce's engagement with Flaubert over the entire course of his writing career. In doing so it delineates the contours and uncovers the effects of one of the most crucially formative artistic relationships of Joyce's life. Travelling through Flaubert's native Normandy in 1925, on a holiday trip which bears all the appearances of a pilgrimage journey, Joyce acknowledged to himself - in a private notebook devoted to the preparation of Finnegans Wake - that 'Gustave Flaubert can rest having made me.' The book identifies and interprets the traces of Joyce's responses to Flaubert from his early work through Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Exiles, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Drawing on extensive bibliographical, archival, and manuscript evidence, it sheds light on the timing and circumstances of Joyce's reading of such Flaubertian masterpieces as Madame Bovary and L'Education sentimentale , as well as of lesser known works such as Salammbô, La Tentation de saint Antoine, Trois Contes, Bouvard et Pécuchet, and the Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues. Examining letters, notebooks, drafts, and published texts, it shows that in all his creative endeavours Joyce uses Flaubert's writing to think through the dynamics and implications of any text's inevitable relations to other texts, and argues that these reflections helped crystallize his own sense of literature as a dense intertextual web of 'strandentwining cables'. Ultimately, this study contends that the ever more radical and self-conscious nature of the citational methods Joyce adopted and adapted from Flaubert paved the way for the emergence of intertextual theory in the 1960s.
Articles by Scarlett Baron
Modernism and Non-Translation, ed. Jason Harding and John Nash , 2019
This chapter examines Joyce’s uses of several languages, especially in Stephen Hero, A Portrait o... more This chapter examines Joyce’s uses of several languages, especially in Stephen Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, and puts forward a taxonomy of foreign language use in Ulysses. The four types identified are: Latin terms associated with the Catholic mass; Italian musical terms; phrases that are deployed in a political context; and untranslated clichés that signify cultural aspiration or pretension. Drawing on examples across the range of Joyce’s writing, the chapter argues that translation can operate in part as a means to overcome forms of social division, as instanced by Stephen and Bloom, while suggesting that all language is already translated, and that translation can never be fully achieved.
'Finnegans Wake' is a bestseller in China and 'Ulysses' is the inspiration behind two successful ... more 'Finnegans Wake' is a bestseller in China and 'Ulysses' is the inspiration behind two successful plays. This article considers his growing reputation in Beijing and beyond.
James Joyce in the Nineteenth Century, ed. John Nash, Oct 2013
Much attention has been paid in recent years to the influence of the emerging medium of film on m... more Much attention has been paid in recent years to the influence of the emerging medium of film on modernist literary experimentation. This essay, while acknowledging the importance of this relationship across the art forms, considers the importance of Flaubert’s development of cinematographic techniques of writing as a crucial literary antecedent to Joyce’s adoption and elaboration of such techniques. The essay considers Flaubert and Joyce’s often analogous views of vision and photography and examines Joyce’s attitudes to the cinema before looking in detail at examples from both authors’ works which suggest an extensive technical intertextuality between the two oeuvres.
Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust, and Deception, ed. John Attridge and Rod Rosenquist, May 2013
Taking wing from three Flaubert-related jottings in
one of Joyce’s notebooks and from an allusion... more Taking wing from three Flaubert-related jottings in
one of Joyce’s notebooks and from an allusion to Bouvard et
Pécuchet in Finnegans Wake, this essay considers the ways
in which the citational method of writing inaugurated by
Flaubert in his final work sowed the seeds of Joyce’s
radically intertextual writing practices. Flaubert’s citational
method is partly defined by the procedure Roland Barthes
refers to as “la citation sans guillemets.” In Flaubert’s and
Joyce’s works, the rejection of such typographical markers
and the deployment of impersonalizing narrative techniques
combine in ways which emphasize the second-handedness of
all language and literature and the irretrievable origins of all
discourse. The essay explores both authors’ methods of
composition, scrutinizes the ways in which intertextuality
takes shape in their reading notebooks and working drafts,
and ultimately suggests that their writings pave the way for
the emergence of intertextual theory in the 1960s.
This essay is about the formative role played by Flaubert in the development of Joyce’s radically... more This essay is about the formative role played by Flaubert in the development of Joyce’s radically intertextual writing techniques and about these two authors’ joint afterlife in critical theory. It identifies and interprets some of the Flaubertian strains in Joyce’s works, using terms and critical lenses — specifically, those of intertextuality, and to a lesser extent, of critique génétique — to whose inception both writers are deemed, in tandem, to have been instrumental. It begins by scrutinizing Joyce’s adaptation of Flaubert’s analogy between the author and God in 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'; goes on to consider the continuation of Stephen Dedalus’s Flaubert inflected musings about creativity in 'Ulysses'; and finally, exploring the compositional methods that went into the making of 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' and 'Finnegans Wake', suggests that the extremity of both authors’ citational practices in these final works ultimately rendered necessary the emergence of intertextual theory in the 1960s.
This essay begins by considering a cluster of instances from Joyce’s early works (the student ess... more This essay begins by considering a cluster of instances from Joyce’s early works (the student essays, Stephen Hero, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) in which the author acts as the translator of phrases borrowed from Flaubert. It goes on to analyze the ways in which those Joycean acts of translation have themselves been tackled by his French translators. Joyce’s translations – particularly in A Portrait – deviate from their originals in ways which interrogate the traditional meaning of originality. The acts of translation staged in A Portrait – wherein they are delegated to Stephen Dedalus – reflect Joyce’s understanding of the potential for originality inherent in even that most intertextual of creative processes. This understanding would come to assume a central role in Joyce’s subsequent writing: his variations on Flaubert in his first published novel betray an insouciant and playful disrespect for the primacy of originals which adumbrates the more generalized and radical intertextuality of his later works. Whether subtle or flamboyant, Joyce’s departures from his source text pose problems for his translators: in its final stages the essay examines how these snippets of text are rendered back into their original language and how the existing various translations shed light on Joyce’s own compositional choices.
Papers on Joyce, 2007
This essay carries out an intertextual reading of both authors’ short stories to reveal the exten... more This essay carries out an intertextual reading of both authors’ short stories to reveal the extent of Joyce’s engagement with Flaubert from the earliest days of his writing career. Joyce’s response to Flaubert in Dubliners can be traced directly to the linguistic, thematic, and structural details of Flaubert’s short stories. The most important of these echoes, and the focus of this essay, concerns the extremely rare word ‘gnomon’, which appears in the first paragraph of Joyce’s opening story, “The Sisters.” This term has never before been related to its appearance in the last of Flaubert’s short stories, “Hérodias.” This essay will argue that Joyce’s use of the word constitutes a self-conscious signpost to his subtle but extensive response to Flaubert in Dubliners.
Oxford English Faculty Website, Dec 2005
Book Reviews by Scarlett Baron
The Conversation, 2024
A review of Parade, by Rachel Cusk.
Oxonian Review, Jun 10, 2013
Oxonian Review, Apr 29, 2013
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Books by Scarlett Baron
Articles by Scarlett Baron
one of Joyce’s notebooks and from an allusion to Bouvard et
Pécuchet in Finnegans Wake, this essay considers the ways
in which the citational method of writing inaugurated by
Flaubert in his final work sowed the seeds of Joyce’s
radically intertextual writing practices. Flaubert’s citational
method is partly defined by the procedure Roland Barthes
refers to as “la citation sans guillemets.” In Flaubert’s and
Joyce’s works, the rejection of such typographical markers
and the deployment of impersonalizing narrative techniques
combine in ways which emphasize the second-handedness of
all language and literature and the irretrievable origins of all
discourse. The essay explores both authors’ methods of
composition, scrutinizes the ways in which intertextuality
takes shape in their reading notebooks and working drafts,
and ultimately suggests that their writings pave the way for
the emergence of intertextual theory in the 1960s.
Book Reviews by Scarlett Baron
one of Joyce’s notebooks and from an allusion to Bouvard et
Pécuchet in Finnegans Wake, this essay considers the ways
in which the citational method of writing inaugurated by
Flaubert in his final work sowed the seeds of Joyce’s
radically intertextual writing practices. Flaubert’s citational
method is partly defined by the procedure Roland Barthes
refers to as “la citation sans guillemets.” In Flaubert’s and
Joyce’s works, the rejection of such typographical markers
and the deployment of impersonalizing narrative techniques
combine in ways which emphasize the second-handedness of
all language and literature and the irretrievable origins of all
discourse. The essay explores both authors’ methods of
composition, scrutinizes the ways in which intertextuality
takes shape in their reading notebooks and working drafts,
and ultimately suggests that their writings pave the way for
the emergence of intertextual theory in the 1960s.
In the company of Scarlett Baron, Alexandra Harris steps out in Woolf's footsteps to the river Ouse and Southease, the route she would have taken most often, to the post office.
Producers: Sarah Bowen and Sara Jane Hall.