English Department Symposium: ‘Transcendental Homelessness’ A century of James Joyce’s A Portrait and Georg Lukács’s Theory of the Novel

    Iontas Building
    Wednesday, December 14, 2016 - 13:30 to 16:30
    Iontas Seminar Room, Ground Floor, Iontas Building

    ‘Transcendental Homelessness’

    A century of James Joyce’s A Portrait and Georg Lukács’s Theory of the Novel

    Published in 1916, Georg Lukács’s The Theory of the Novel and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man stand at awkward angles to the reputation of their respective authors: a ‘pre-Marxist’ essay by a key Marxist critic; a ‘realist novel’ by a major modernist. Yet essay and novel have significantly shaped how we now conceptualise the aesthetic and political dimensions of the modern novel – the “epic of a world abandoned by God”.

    To mark this centenary, the Department of English at Maynooth University will host a symposium to reflect on the varied legacies of these two books.

    Speakers:
    Seamus Deane (Notre Dame);
    Sharea Deckard (UCD);
    Sinéad Kennedy (MU);
    Emer Nolan (MU);
    Michael G Cronin (MU)
    Chair:
    Colin Graham (MU)