Ellmann's Joyce, The Biography of a Masterpiece and its Maker: The Letter between Literature and Cinema.

What motivated Richard Ellmann to write his biography of James Joyce, long established as a masterwork of twentieth century biography, exceeding in importance such stellar texts as Leon Edel's Henry James: A Life or George D. Painter's Marcel Proust? Zachary Leader explains why in his archive-center...

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Publicado en:Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 49; no. 3; pp. 196 - 202
Autores principales: Nadel, Ira, Chattopadhyay, Arka, Holman, Matthew
Formato: Book Review
Publicado: Indiana University Press Spring2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Ellmann's Joyce, The Biography of a Masterpiece and its Maker: The Letter between Literature and Cinema.
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          Nadel, Ira
          Chattopadhyay, Arka
          Holman, Matthew
        affil:
          University of British Columbia
          Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
          University of Hertfordshire
      su:
        Joyce, James, 1882-1941
        Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981
        Psychoanalytic theory
        Biographers
        Biography (Literary form)
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          Joyce, James, 1882-1941
          Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981
          Psychoanalytic theory
          Biographers
          Biography (Literary form)
      keyword:
        Abstract Expressionism
        biography
        cinema
        experimental art
        Hugh Kenner
        Jacques Lacan
        James Joyce
        Joyce studies
        Mannerism
        modernism
        New York School
        Oxford
        psychoanalysis
        Richard Ellmann
        the avant-garde
        Vladimir Nabokov
        writing
      ab: What motivated Richard Ellmann to write his biography of James Joyce, long established as a masterwork of twentieth century biography, exceeding in importance such stellar texts as Leon Edel's Henry James: A Life or George D. Painter's Marcel Proust? Zachary Leader explains why in his archive-centered biography of Ellmann the man and his Joyce book, providing new details and perspectives. But in documenting Ellmann's methods and discoveries, Leader hesitates to analyze several pitfalls of the text and the individual, while objecting to the role of critical theory in biographical writing. Sigi Jöttkandt's book The Nabokov Effect (2024) has implications for the Lacanian letter's traversal between literature and cinema. The book presents a new reading of Lacan's idea of the sinthome as a splitting of the subject and how it illuminates the way Nabokov subverts linear time and death by dialecticizing the semiotic systems of literature and cinema. I link Jöttkandt's reading of the letter in Vladimir Nabokov with Jacques Lacan's idea of "lituraterre" via a Nabokov trope, analyzed by Jöttkandt. I further extend her psychoanalytic approach by connecting the letter's trajectory between literature and cinema with Lacan's point that literature moves out of itself in its turn to "lituraterre." Frank O'Hara's New York School and Mid-Century Mannerism draws on artistic vocabularies of the High Renaissance, the Pindaric, and Mannerist period styles to offer a new way of reading the coterie culture, gestural performativity, and stylized aesthetics of the New York School, especially as they relate to Abstract Expressionism and neoclassical dance. Ladkin uses attentive close readings to highlight how Frank O'Hara, as the linchpin of the movement, articulated the excesses of the earlier Mannerist period by situating him within queer lineages from late Renaissance statuary to icons of postwar Hollywood.
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    language: English
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