James Joyce is universally known for having produced an oeuvre which would shape many subsequent works. Without a doubt, the work of the Irish writer has become a touchstone to which, up to a certain extent and unwittingly, we have all become heirs.

It is unquestionable that, even if we are living in the so-called post-modern era, we are still heirs to modernism, whose keys Joyce, along with Pound and Elliot, established, i.e. the deployment of a lexicon which mingles colloquialisms and the traditional poetic language, new technology and an interest in precision of language together with a clear political scepticism.

It is well known that through his most celebrated books, James Joyce broke with 19th-century literary traditions and carried out a psychological exploration through narrative techniques which revolutionized the writing of his time. The Irishman used the interior-monologue technique in a pre-syntactic and almost pre-verbal way to unfold the thoughts and most intimate feelings of his characters, taking the analysis of the fantasy in human consciousness to the limit. Later on, he delved into the depths of the oneiric world in a work that would become a sort of vital manifesto more than a novel.

Joyce and his contemporaries understood that they were at the limit of an ideology which would result pernicious in the new era. In fact, few witnesses of aesthetic freedom have resounded with greater strength than those uttered by Stephen Dedalus: “You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” Similarly, in “Hind Swaraj,” Ghandi declared his outright rejection of a derived nationalism which would inevitably take them to an “English Rule without the Englishmen”.

However, Joyce and Ghandi were not alone in their project of uniting the sophistication of individual conscience to more ambitious political and personal emancipation projects. In this effort, and to give out some names, we can mention the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, the Chinese thinker Zhang Taiyan or Doctor Muhammad Iqbal. A century characterized by violence later, their heirs seem to have been writers politically committed like Nadine Gordimer, Kenzaburo Oe or José Saramago among others, in whose works active and inquisitive human nature instead of the tribe or the nation have greater sovereignty.

From the perspective of a global 21st century, this makes us question what authors are closest to Joyce in our contemporary society and who has taken the Irish writer’s baton.

We encourage you to take part in our XXIX Meeting by sending your articles which, as you know, can focus on the work of the Irish writer or on Irish Studies in general.

The deadline for the submission of articles will be 2nd February 2018, coinciding with the birth of the Irish writer and the publication of Ulysses. Please, send them to the following email address: xxixencuentrosjamesjoyce@gmail.com.

The venue will be the Bizkaia Aretoa, at the heart of our beautiful city and but a few metres away from the renowned Guggenheim museum (https://www.ehu.eus/eu/web/bizkaia-aretoa).

A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published in book form.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers include: 

Fritz Senn (Director of the James Joyce Foundation)

Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin)

Francisco García Tortosa (Universidad de Sevilla)