Introduction

Abstract

James Joyce’s influence on contemporary literature has been profound, yet remains surprisingly unexplored. Joycean Legacies is the first essay collection to examine Joyce’s complex influence biographically, textually, stylistically, and generically on a selection of twentieth-century and contemporary writers. Following the enormous impact of postcolonial studies on Joyce criticism in the 1990s through the early 2000s, as exhibited in such influential essay collections as Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes’ Semicolonial Joyce (Cambridge, 2000) and Christine van Boheemen-Saaf and Colleen Lamos’ Masculinities in Joyce: Postcolonial Constructions (Rodopi, 2001), recent collections on Joyce have followed three main trends,¹ representing, firstly, the increasing globalization of Joyce scholarship, for instance, in conference proceedings such as Knowles et al, Joyce in Trieste: An Album of Risky Readings (Florida, 2007), R. Brandon Kershner and Tekia Mecsnóber’s Joycean Unions: Post-Millenial Essays from East to West (Rodopi, 2013), Franca Ruggieri’s several essay collections coming out of Italy, and the burgeoning production of Spanish Joyceans (Simons et al, Silverpowdered Olivetrees: Reading Joyce in Spain [Universidad de Sevilla, 2003]; Suárez et al, New Perspectives on James Joyce [Universidad de Deusto, 2009]; Caneda et al, Vigorous Joyce: Atlantic Readings of James Joyce [Universidad de Vigo, 2010]).