Periodic Reporting for period 1 - JOYCENSTEIN (Joycenstein: James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and the modernist coterie.)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-04-01 do 2025-03-31
SUMMARY
JOYCENSTEIN examined the cultural and literary history of the competitive and antagonistic relationship between the modernist writers James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. In doing so, the project investigated the relationship between literary style, reception, and legacy, while also examining factors that contributed to literary reception in the modernist era such as gender and gendered labour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, literary style, and literary networks. Examining Joyce and Stein’s extensive output of literary writings, but also the correspondence and life writing produced by their overlapping circle of friends and collaborators, the project investigated how literary biographies and cultural and literary histories of an era impact upon literary reception. The project challenged extant histories of Joyce and Stein’s relationship by focusing on the inconsistencies and inaccuracies identifiable in life writing from the era, while also initiating a wide ranging critical reassessment of Joyce’s relationship with his women contemporaries in the arts and literature.
CONTEXT
James Joyce and Gertrude Stein are icons of literary modernism. Notorious and central to the movement’s genesis and evolution, participants in early celebrity culture, they represent modernist literature at its most transgressive and avant-garde. Both exiles (from Ireland and America, respectively), they lived alongside one another in Paris for twenty years, regularly appeared in the same literary magazines, kept overlapping circles of friends, and published some of the era’s most innovative texts. Both also fostered a strong animosity towards one another, developed radically divergent styles of writing and – as a direct consequence of both of these factors – are rarely considered in tandem by critics of the period. Instead, they have come to serve as useful critical touchstones for the diverse styles practised by writers such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, and Dorothy Richardson, with Joyce and Stein related separately to these figures, or grouped in separate modernist pairings. JOYCENSTEIN has sought to disrupts this arrangement. Rather than continuing to keep Joyce and Stein separate, the project examined how their modernisms truly compare, and how their works have been exploited to serve and support critical models of modernist styles and our understanding of the modernist era.
MAIN OBJECTIVES
The main objective of JOYCENSTEIN was to conduce the first ever comparative study of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, both in terms of their literary writings and their awareness of and engagement with each other via their overlapping network of friends in Paris in the 1920s and thereafter. Beyond this core objective, the project sought to initiate a broader, interventionist study of the reception of modernist women in relation to Joyce, and how inaccuracies or prejudices in life writing and contemporaneous histories of the modernist erahave influenced present-day understandings of the period.
JOYCENSTEIN examined the cultural and literary history of the competitive and antagonistic relationship between the modernist writers James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. In doing so, the project investigated the relationship between literary style, reception, and legacy, while also examining factors that contributed to literary reception in the modernist era such as gender and gendered labour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, literary style, and literary networks. Examining Joyce and Stein’s extensive output of literary writings, but also the correspondence and life writing produced by their overlapping circle of friends and collaborators, the project investigated how literary biographies and cultural and literary histories of an era impact upon literary reception. The project challenged extant histories of Joyce and Stein’s relationship by focusing on the inconsistencies and inaccuracies identifiable in life writing from the era, while also initiating a wide ranging critical reassessment of Joyce’s relationship with his women contemporaries in the arts and literature.
CONTEXT
James Joyce and Gertrude Stein are icons of literary modernism. Notorious and central to the movement’s genesis and evolution, participants in early celebrity culture, they represent modernist literature at its most transgressive and avant-garde. Both exiles (from Ireland and America, respectively), they lived alongside one another in Paris for twenty years, regularly appeared in the same literary magazines, kept overlapping circles of friends, and published some of the era’s most innovative texts. Both also fostered a strong animosity towards one another, developed radically divergent styles of writing and – as a direct consequence of both of these factors – are rarely considered in tandem by critics of the period. Instead, they have come to serve as useful critical touchstones for the diverse styles practised by writers such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, and Dorothy Richardson, with Joyce and Stein related separately to these figures, or grouped in separate modernist pairings. JOYCENSTEIN has sought to disrupts this arrangement. Rather than continuing to keep Joyce and Stein separate, the project examined how their modernisms truly compare, and how their works have been exploited to serve and support critical models of modernist styles and our understanding of the modernist era.
MAIN OBJECTIVES
The main objective of JOYCENSTEIN was to conduce the first ever comparative study of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, both in terms of their literary writings and their awareness of and engagement with each other via their overlapping network of friends in Paris in the 1920s and thereafter. Beyond this core objective, the project sought to initiate a broader, interventionist study of the reception of modernist women in relation to Joyce, and how inaccuracies or prejudices in life writing and contemporaneous histories of the modernist erahave influenced present-day understandings of the period.
JOYCENSTEIN was divided into five work packages, three of which were substantially completed by the revised end-date of the project (17 months vs planned project length of 24 months).
WORK PERFORMED
WP1: Mapping the coteries of Modernist Paris (5 months primary research m1-m5; 4 months writing up m21-24).
Through a study of primary sources from the modernist era, with a particular focus on life writing and other non-fiction sources such as letters, and drawing on archival holdings in the Zurich James Joyce Foundation Library, this work package compiled a comprenehsive survey of the Joyce and Stein coteries in Paris. By analysing accounts of Joyce and Stein’s respective networks in Paris, this work package clarified the nature of their relationship while also identifying key factors in the history of scholarly accounts of their relationship.
WP2: Contrasting Joyce and Stein’s modernisms: 1900–1922 (7 months primary research m6-m12; 4 months writing up m21-24)
The archival research conducted during WP1 was supplemented with further archival research conducted online using the digital achives of the National Library of Ireland and Princeton University Library. This allowed for the identification of further primary sources, some preliminary research findings and the development of the project’s initial dissemination outputs.
WP3: Contrasting Joyce and Stein’s modernisms: 1923-1946 (12 months primary research, m13-m24)
The third work package was scheduled for the final twelve months of the project, starting in month 13. Though JOYCENSTEIN ended before this, in month 17, due consideration was given to the ways in which information from WPs 1 and 2 could be exploited to create awareness of the projects core objectives through collaborative dissemination outputs including conferences and publications.
WP4: Communication and Dissemination (24 months; m1-m24)
The fourth work package was concerned with communication and dissemination. Drawing on and exploiting the research findings of WP1, WP2, and WP3, WP4 focused on communicating research findings, preparing journal articles and book chapters for dissemination, and organising an interdisciplinary symposium to consolidate knowledge and facilitate new research links.
WP5: Training and Management (24 months; m1-m24)
The fifth and final work package was scheduled for the duration of the project and was conferned with project management and training. Following consultation with my mentor, I prepared a career development plan, which was regularly monitored and revised in tandem with the evolution of the project. I underwent training courses offered at the host institution, complied with reporting activities, and, in line with the professional objectives of the Fellowship, applied for jobs and other funding opportunities where possible and appropriate.
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS
The main achievement of JOYCENSTEIN was to conduct research into the first ever comparative study of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein while also initiating a broader, interventionist study of the reception of modernist women in relation to Joyce. This is ongoing work, which requires further energy and time beyond the completion of the project.
WORK PERFORMED
WP1: Mapping the coteries of Modernist Paris (5 months primary research m1-m5; 4 months writing up m21-24).
Through a study of primary sources from the modernist era, with a particular focus on life writing and other non-fiction sources such as letters, and drawing on archival holdings in the Zurich James Joyce Foundation Library, this work package compiled a comprenehsive survey of the Joyce and Stein coteries in Paris. By analysing accounts of Joyce and Stein’s respective networks in Paris, this work package clarified the nature of their relationship while also identifying key factors in the history of scholarly accounts of their relationship.
WP2: Contrasting Joyce and Stein’s modernisms: 1900–1922 (7 months primary research m6-m12; 4 months writing up m21-24)
The archival research conducted during WP1 was supplemented with further archival research conducted online using the digital achives of the National Library of Ireland and Princeton University Library. This allowed for the identification of further primary sources, some preliminary research findings and the development of the project’s initial dissemination outputs.
WP3: Contrasting Joyce and Stein’s modernisms: 1923-1946 (12 months primary research, m13-m24)
The third work package was scheduled for the final twelve months of the project, starting in month 13. Though JOYCENSTEIN ended before this, in month 17, due consideration was given to the ways in which information from WPs 1 and 2 could be exploited to create awareness of the projects core objectives through collaborative dissemination outputs including conferences and publications.
WP4: Communication and Dissemination (24 months; m1-m24)
The fourth work package was concerned with communication and dissemination. Drawing on and exploiting the research findings of WP1, WP2, and WP3, WP4 focused on communicating research findings, preparing journal articles and book chapters for dissemination, and organising an interdisciplinary symposium to consolidate knowledge and facilitate new research links.
WP5: Training and Management (24 months; m1-m24)
The fifth and final work package was scheduled for the duration of the project and was conferned with project management and training. Following consultation with my mentor, I prepared a career development plan, which was regularly monitored and revised in tandem with the evolution of the project. I underwent training courses offered at the host institution, complied with reporting activities, and, in line with the professional objectives of the Fellowship, applied for jobs and other funding opportunities where possible and appropriate.
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS
The main achievement of JOYCENSTEIN was to conduct research into the first ever comparative study of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein while also initiating a broader, interventionist study of the reception of modernist women in relation to Joyce. This is ongoing work, which requires further energy and time beyond the completion of the project.
JOYCENSTEIN has highlighted the relationship between literary reception and the representation of modernist authors in the life writing of their peers and contemporaries. By collaborating with other researchers in the field of literary modernism it has initiated a dynamic redress of the history of Joyce’s relationship with the women in his familial and broader cultural network. It has started to create a more nuanced account of the modernist era, paying particular attention to ‘blind spots’ in the field with respect to gender, gendered labour, and the role prejudiced, misrepresentative, or factually inaccurate life writing and biographies play in the creation of literary reputations. Though most of its outputs are still in the course of being edited, reviewed and published, the project has indicated the value of examining Joyce and the Joyce circle’s exploitative practices towards women. Further research and resources would be required in order to see this project through to its completion, which would require additional time and funding.