Wykład gościnny dr. Thomasa Gurke (University of Minnesota, USA), 17 grudnia 2025 r.

Zakład Semiotyki Instytutu Lingwistyki Stosowanej zaprasza na wykład dr. Thomasa Gurke z University of Minnesota pt. „Translation and Transformation: Literature and Music in James Joyce’s Ulysses” . Spotkanie (w j. angielskim) odbędzie się 17.12.2025 r. (środa) o godz. 9.45, sala 01.079 (budynek ILS, poziom -1, ul. Dobra 55).

 

The Department of Semiotics at the Institute of Applied Linguistics invites you to a guest lecture by Dr. Thomas Gurke from the University of Minnesota (Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch). His lecture, titled “Translation and Transformation: Literature and Music in James Joyce’s Ulysses,” will take place on 17 December 2025 (Wednesday) at 9:45 in room 01.079 (ILS building, Dobra St. 55).

 

Translation and Transformation: Literature and Music in James Joyce’s Ulysses

This talk ponders the interrelationships between music and literature within the “Sirens”-chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The first part of my talk will focus on the various intermedial strategies that may be discerned when looking at a transformation of music into literature. The second part will then show how literature itself is transformed by the means of musical affectivity. Contrary to most critics, I argue that Joyce’s “Sirens”-chapter does not primarily display an imitation of music but an imitation of musical affectivity. I will show how Joyce creates a ‘Poetics of Musical Affectivity’ which recharges language with an affective potential via the art of music. How can this, in turn, be deemed translatable?

 

Thomas Gurke is DAAD Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota. He has a degree in English Literature and Musicology. His PhD dissertation focused on the intersemiotic, aesthetic, and affective dynamics of music and literature in the texts of James Joyce. His other publications focus on Joyce, contemporary fiction, ecology, the short-story, and popular culture. He is Co-Editor of Words, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations (Palgrave, 2021) and Special Edition Editor of Emotions and Affect in Words and Music (MDPI, forthcoming 2026).