joyce’s “world of words”
Conference Dates: 5-6 February 2026
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: November 9, 2025
SUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY
NOVEMBER 30, 2025
Keynote speakers:
- Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame
- Annalisa Volpone, University of Perugia
Organisers: Franca Ruggieri, Fabio Luppi, Enrico Terrinoni, Serenella Zanotti
The James Joyce Italian Foundation invites proposals for the Eighteenth Annual Conference in Rome to celebrate Joyce’s 144th birthday.
Italian writer Stefano D’Arrigo once wrote that “Joyce caresses language as a child caresses grass”. As a creator of language, in Finnegans Wake Joyce wishes words a pleasant journey: “may his hundred thousand welcome stewed letters, relayed wand postchased, multiply, ay faith, and plultiply” (FW 403-4.1-2). Plultiply probably comes from another invented word to be found in John Florio’s second Italian/English dictionary: Queen Anne’s New World of Words (1611). The word is infinitiplicare, which Florio translates as “to multiplie in infinitie”, and is inspired by his friend Giodano Bruno’s theories on the infiniteness of the universe.
Joyce multiplies words “in infinitie” by “plultiplying” them, and in this conference we will reflect on how his oeuvre might still interact with us in always different and productive ways from the standpoint of languages and various semiotic discourses. We will look at how his works’ multifaceted messages can still be fully comprehended in always different ways. We will also explore how old and new readings of Joyce have been reshaped in different languages and cultures through translation dynamics.
We invite scholars to send proposals for a 20-minute contribution. The Conference will be the occasion to present unpublished papers and works in progress on Joyce to an international audience.
Related topics include, but are not limited to:
– Joyce and languages
– Joyce the translator
– Culture and language in Joyce
– Multimodal Joyce
– The changing reception of Joyce’s works
– Joyce and national cultures
– Joyce in the postindustrial/postmodern era
– (Post)colonial Joyce
– Joyce and intertextuality
– Joyce’s works in translation
– Joyce Studies now
– Fiction and biography in Joyce’s works
Please send an abstract (500 words maximum in length) along with a short (approx. 300 words) “narrative” bio-sketch to joyceconference@gmail.com.
Send two separate Word files, not PDFs.
Selected papers will be published.
The Conference includes a Joyce birthday party.
Deadline for proposals: November 9, 2025
Accepted speakers will be notified by November 30, 2025
On arrival, participants will be expected to sign up for membership of The James Joyce Italian Foundation Students: 40 euro; Individual Membership: 50 euro; Institutions: 60 euro; Supporting members: 80 euro). Accepted speakers will have to arrange their own accommodation and travel. The foundation does not provide advice on accommodation.
Please visit the James Joyce Italian Foundation website for updates: https://thejamesjoyceitalianfoundation.it/
ALL PAPERS WILL BE DELIVERED IN PRESENCE.