Conversation Theory and dialectics, James Joyce, Modernism

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This research uses the framework of Conversation Theory to explore the complex question of metaphysics in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake through a close examination of four philosophers who appear in the text: Giambattista Vico, René Descartes, Giordano Bruno and George Berkeley. Through the lens of Conversation Theory and dialectics, this thesis will draw links between the philosophers, examining how the overlap between their divergent theories of knowledge leads to an additional, philosophical structure in the Wake. To this end, the work will function as a questioning of Joyce's use of philosophy, producing new scholarship on those, such as Descartes and Bruno, whose presence is often underestimated in Joyce's work, whilst also working towards addressing a new, structural interpretation of the text.