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Professor Samuel Slote

Professor (English)
ARTS BUILDING

 slotes@tcd.ie

 3531896 1319


Biography

My primary areas of research are in the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and, by extension, in European Modernist studies more generally. My contributions to this field focus - but not exclusively - on Joyce and Beckett's manipulation of languages and literary styles and my work is informed by a number of theoretical and critical perspectives, such as genetic criticism (the study of literary manuscripts), textual studies, deconstruction, and translation studies. In 2013 my monograph Joyce's Nietzschean Ethics was published by Palgrave. In 2012 my annotated edition of Ulysses was first published; this includes 9,000 all-new notes with a word count approximately equal to that of Ulysses itself. In her review for the James Joyce Quarterly, Jeri Johnson writes that my annotations are 'exacting, full, textured, and, yes, economical of expression' and they 'expand our understanding of the extraordinary breadth of Joyce's encyclopedic range of reference'. I am currently working on three different large-scale projects. The first is a monograph on the nature of the political in Joyce and Beckett's works, primarily Finnegans Wake and How It Is. The aim of this project is to use Joyce and Beckett to think through a conceptualisation of the political that is not simply partisan or ideological, but rather to be understood in terms of community and communication. This book begins with a genealogy of philosophical considerations on the nature of the political from Aristotle, through Hobbes and Hegel, and to Jean-Luc Nancy, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty. At present two chapters have been drafted. My next project is editing the first ever collection of Joyce's own translations, which span his career as a writer and include his translations of French poetry, his translation of Gerhart Hauptmann's play Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Sunrise), and his translation into Italian of the 'Anna Livia Plurabelle' chapter of Finnegans Wake. Because Joyce's translations have never been collected before into one volume, they represent the only aspect of his output that has been almost entirely ignored by critics. My last ongoing project is an online and expanded version of my annotations to Ulysses. I am the founding co-director of the International Samuel Beckett Summer School, which has been held annually at Trinity since 2011 and is aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at postgraduate students. This brings together students, scholars, and performers of Beckett from all over the world. Building upon the networks already established with the Summer School, I have established the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies along with my colleague Nicholas Johnson in the School of Creative Arts. In 2008 I was elected to a six-year term as a Trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation and in 2016 I was elected to a second six-year term. I have served on the organising committees of two past International James Joyce Symposia: in 2008 at the Université François-Rabelais in Tours and in 2012 here in Dublin, jointly held at Trinity and UCD. I am also on the academic committee for the 2018 International James Joyce Symposium, which will be held at the University of Antwerp. I am in the early stages of planning for the 2022 Symposium, which is to be held at Trinity; this conference will mark the centennial of Ulysses's publication. In addition to my work on Joyce and Beckett, I have published on Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Queneau, Dante, Mallarmé, and Elvis. I am interested in hearing from prospective graduate students who are considering working on Joyce or Beckett.

Research Tags

  James Joyce   Samuel Beckett

Representations

Details Date
Trustee, International James Joyce Foundation 2008-14; 2016-22
Member of the Editorial Board, European Joyce Studies 2017-
Member of the Editorial Board, James Joyce Quarterly 2015-
Member of the Editorial Board, Joyce Studies Annual 2013-
Member of the Editorial Board, Dublin James Joyce Journal 2008-
Member of the Editorial Board, English Text Construction 2007-
Member of the Editorial Board, Litteraria Pragensia 2007-
Member of the Editorial Board, Genetic Joyce Studies 1999-
Referee, Oxford University Press 2018
Referee, The Johns Hopkins University Press 2017
Referee, University of Toronto Press 2015
Referee, University Press of Florida 2017, 2018, 2020
External Examiner, Hertford College, University of Oxford 2010
Referee, Bloomsbury Academic Press 2020
Referee, Palgrave-Macmillan 2020
Referee, University of Michigan Press 2019
Referee, Liverpool University Press 2020

Languages

Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
French Fluent Fluent Fluent
Italian Medium Medium Medium

Memberships

Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies

Details Date From Date To
Équipe Joyce, Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes 1998 present
International James Joyce Foundation 1992
International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures 2007
European Society for Textual Scholarship 2007
Beckett International Foundation
Sam Slote, Marc Mamigonian, John Turner, Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses, 1, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, Book, PUBLISHED
Proteus in, editor(s)Catherine Flynn , The Cambridge Centenary 'Ulysses', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp81 - 89, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
The Multiplications of Translation in, editor(s)Catherine Flynn , The New Joyce Studies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp79 - 94, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Sam Slote, `Eumaeus": Literally the Antepenultimate Episode, Joyce Studies Annual, 2022, p319 - 337, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Emma-Louise Silva, Sam Slote, and Dirk Van Hulle , James Joyce and the Arts, 1, Leiden, Brill, 2020, 219pp, Book, PUBLISHED
Ulysses May Be a Legal Fiction in, editor(s)Philip Kitcher , Joyce's 'Ulysses': Philosophical Perspectives, New York, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp132 - 157, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Derrida and the Phantom Yeses of Ulysse in, editor(s)Jolanta Wawrzycka and Erika Mihálycsa , Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century, Leiden, Brill, 2020, pp308 - 318, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Epic Modernism: Ulysses and Finnegans Wake in, editor(s)Liam Harte , The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, pp151 - 166, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Sam Slote, All the Way from Gibraltar, James Joyce Quarterly, 57, (1-2), 2020, p115 - 126, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
Sam Slote, Stuck in the Middle with Ulysses, James Joyce Literary Supplement, 34, (2), 2020, p2 - 2, Journal Article, PUBLISHED
  

Page 1 of 8
Aoife King (ed), Rita Duffy, Caitríona Lally, Jacob J. Erickson, Donna Lyons et al., What the Pandemic Means: Perspectives from the Trinity Long Room Hub Covid-19 Blog Collection, 2021, - 1-56, Notes: [Artwork: Rita Duffy], Miscellaneous, PUBLISHED
Finnegans Wake An Introduction of Sorts in, Finnegans Wake, London, Alma, 2020, ppv - xx, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Sam Slote, Ulysses Unpicked from Bud to Bloom, Review of Joyce's Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in 'Ulysses' , by Luca Crispi , Irish Times, 2016, p10 , Review, PUBLISHED
James Joyce, Ulysses, London, Alma Classics, 2012, Book, PUBLISHED
A Wake in Chapelizod in, editor(s)Motoko Fujita , In the Shadow of James Joyce, Dublin, Lilliput, 2011, pp48 - 50, [Sam Slote], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Sam Slote, A Centennial Bloomsday at Buffalo, Buffalo, The Poetry Collection, 2004, Book, PUBLISHED

  

Research Interests

Description Of Research Interests

My primary areas of research are in the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and, by extension, in European Modernist studies more generally. My contributions to this field focus on Joyce and Beckett's manipulation of languages and literary styles and my work is informed by a number of theoretical and critical perspectives, such as genetic criticism (the study of literary manuscripts), textual studies, deconstruction, and translation studies I am currently working on three different large-scale projects. The first is an edition of all-new annotations to Joyce's Ulysses, which updates the work I did for the Alma Classics edition of Ulysses (published in 2012 and revised in 2015 and 2017). The new edition is 620,000 words, which is more than double the length of the Alma edition. It is currently in production at Oxford University Press; the final manuscript was submitted in December 2019 and will be published both in print and on the Oxford Scholarly Editions Online platform in the early autumn of 2021 (the Covid-19 crisis has delayed publication by about six months). My next project is a monograph on the nature of the political in Joyce and Beckett's works, primarily Finnegans Wake and How It Is. The aim of this project is to use Joyce and Beckett to think through a conceptualisation of the political that is not simply partisan or ideological, but rather to be understood in terms of community and communication. This book begins with a genealogy of philosophical considerations on the nature of the political from Aristotle, through Hobbes and Hegel, and to Jean-Luc Nancy, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty. My final project is editing the first ever collection of Joyce's own translations, which span his career as a writer. Because Joyce's translations have never been collected before into one volume, they represent the only aspect of his output that has been almost entirely ignored by critics.