Exílios caminhantes: imbricações entre autorrepresentação e a narrativa de cidades nas literaturas de James Joyce e Suketu Mehta

Abstract

This investigation propounds a comparison between works by Irish novelist James Joyce produced up to 1904 and the work Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, written by Indian author Suketu Mehta, published in 2002. The investigation aims at identifying similarities between certain procedures of representation of the city, and of self-representation, i.e., the representation of one s own self, in the works of Joyce and Mehta. It is also an objective of this investigation argue that such similarities are not merely fortuitous, but that they are in fact related to the continuity of historical processes directly connected to the advent, propagation and maintenance of what American historian Ellen Meiksins Wood calls Empire of Capital . In order to carry out the investigation, a research, made of parts that compose the chapters of the thesis, was developed as follows: a revision of the concepts of colony, empire, and imperialism, as well as of the relationship between the British Empire and Ireland Britain s first colony and Joyce s homeland , and of the relationship between the British Empire and India Britain s greatest and most important colony, and the country where Mehta was born; an exploration of the theme of the city, encompassing its relevance to contemporaneity, the rising of the capitalist industrial city, and the ideas of German sociologist Georg Simmel on the psychological configuration generated in and by such urban configuration; a detailed investigation of Joyce s initial work, aiming at exploring the development of what we call the Joycean dramatic literature, its use in Joyce s first fictional texts, and the relation of such literature and the theme of the city; a brief review of some of the remarkable events of the 20th century that we believe to have close connection with our research: the downfall of the British Empire, the rising of the USA as a new imperial power, the relation between the modernist movement and the imperialistic context of the beginning of the 20th century and the theme of the city mainly illustrated by Joyce s figure and work; a detailed exploration of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, its characters and themes; finally, the unveiling of the existing similarities and differences between Joyce s and Mehta s narratives and of how such traits are connected with the rising, maintenance, and propagation of the Empire of Capital .