Current PhD Student

Chris Wogan

Thesis Title:

‘My branches lofty are taking root’: Trees, leaves and language in the works of James Joyce.

Supervisor:

Professor Matthew Campbell

Description:

Although past research has explored ecocritical approaches to James Joyce, there has not yet been a full-length study to examine trees specifically across his entire ouevre. My research explores the intersection between trees and language in Joyce’s poetry, drama and fiction, and argues that as his writing progressed, he intensified this relation.

I explore how Joyce used trees as relational mediators on which to project contemparaneous discourses in sexuality, embodiment, aesthetic development, philology, evolutionary biology, linguistic growth and literary form. Joyce’s trees reveal the many intertexts at play in his work, the inexpressibility of spiritual communication, the shared physiologies of organic bodies, the etymological subtexts behind semantic choices, the cultural origins of language and the collective scaffolds lending his works organic structure.

This argument sheds new light on wider issues in Joyce studies by exploring Joyce’s use of nonhuman, multispecies arboreal organisms to generate cultural meaning. My research is supported by ecocritical and critical plant studies theory alongside examinations of Joyce’s correspondence, notebooks and archives.