Abstract
I want to approach the last phase of Johnson’s activity as a novelist by bringing it into contact with an idea that is crucial for Joyce’s perception of the cultural politics of literature in Finnegans Wake. Near the end of the first section of Part Two of the Wake, the text seems to ready its readers for the advent of a ‘holy language’ by clearing its path of the debris of literature (‘littérature’) left behind by other Irish writers:
Home all go. Halome. Blare no more ramsblares, oddmund barkes! And cease your fumings, kindalled bushies! And sherrigoldies yeassymgnays; your wildeshaweshowe moves swiftly sterne ward! For here the holy language. Soons to come. To pausse. (Joyce 1964 [1939]: 256)
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Works cited
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© 2014 Rod Mengham
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Mengham, R. (2014). Antepostdated Johnson. In: Jordan, J., Ryle, M. (eds) B. S. Johnson and Post-War Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349552_8
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