In James Joyce and the Matter of Paris (Cambridge, 2019) Catherine Flynn (English) explores the ways in which Joyce's imaginative consciousness was shaped by the paradigmatic city of European urban modernity. Joyce’s trip to the French metropole at the age of twenty sparked a question that motivated his work for the rest of his life: what, given the force of modern capitalism, is art? Flynn examines the significance of the time Joyce spent in Paris and the variety of French authors whose works inflected his experience of that city. Her book resituates the most canonical of Irish modernists in a European avant-garde context while revealing important links between Anglophone modernism and critical theory.

Flynn is joined by Michael Lucey (Comparative Literature and French). After a brief conversation, they open the floor for discussion.