One Long Blue Streak: Joyce and Swearing - Paperback

by Frances Ilmberger (Volume Editor), Casey Lawrence (Volume Editor)

One Long Blue Streak traces the unstoppable flow of indecent, profane, and off-colour language coursing through James Joyce's work, inviting readers to decode and delight in the bawdry and blasphemy that established Joyce as one of the notoriously obscene writers in the canon. From the elided vulgarity of Dubliners to the anarchic wordplay of Finnegans Wake, Joyce seized upon the power of swearing, cursing, and so-called foul language - sacred, sexual, and scatological alike - to create a playful space in which speech is still free.

Author Biography

Frances Ilmberger is a lecturer at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and the archivist of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation in Switzerland. Her most recent book is an edited volume, Ulysses Polytropos: Essays on James Joyce by Fritz Senn (European Joyce Studies, 2022).

Casey Lawrence completed her doctorate in English literature at Trinity College Dublin in 2023. She organised the 2022 Wilde and Joyce Symposium and co-edited the resultant essay collection, "Caliban's Mirror: Reflections of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde," Open Library of Humanities Journal (2024-25).