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As a genetic study, this book uncovers the creative DNA of James Joyce's oeuvre by looking at the cultural forces that shaped him and that he in turn shaped in the creation of his books, developing a two-way relationship with history, memory and national identity. Following his development as an author, it revisits and redirects Joyce's attitudes towards the Irish Revival. From Chamber Music, through Ulysses to Finnegans Wake Joyce sought to define a cultural identity that went, in many respects, against the mainstream, but that nonetheless belonged to the wider Revivalist project with which it shared certain characteristics and aspirations.

Joyce's historical and genealogical imagination is read through a careful investigation of the cultural materials that went into his work. Based on evidence from his personal library and the extensive archive of reading notes, ideas, sketches and drafts, this book investigates how Joyce used, absorbed and repurposed these materials creatively in his writing; it does so by bringing for the first time the methods of genetic criticism into the domain of cultural memory and the sociology of the text. Thus this books defines "cultural genetics" as an exploration of the textual material that are Joyce's sources interacts with the culture that produced and received them.