Notes on Joyce and South Africa: Coincidence and Concordance

These notes offer first a sketch of the significance of James Joyce to a selection of South African writers, from N P van Wyk Louw to Ingrid Winterbach. This is followed by an account of Joyce's allusions to South African in his work up to and including Ulysses. The sequence of allusions in the novel suggests that they follow the plot as it moves in a general sense from politics and alienation to friendship and love. The reading leads to an account of the recurrent South African markers in Joyce's biography.