Connecting James Joyce with Armenia

October 13, 2005
Belmont Citizen Herald

Marc A. Mamigonian of Belmont will speak at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research Center in Belmont, on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 8 p.m., on the Irish novelist James Joyce's use of Armenian words and themes. {Marc A. Mamigonian is the director of programs and publications at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research Center}
[...]
James Joyce wrote his final book, "Finnegan's Wake," between 1923 and 1939. Joyce, one of the high priests of literary modernism whose earlier novels, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916) and "Ulysses" (1922), were in many ways the ultimate expression of that movement, in "Finnegan's Wake" demolished the very notion of a unified work of art, of literary structure, and of the English language itself.
[...]
[...]. This lecture will explore the ways in which Joyce used the Armenians, the Armenian language, and the Armenian Genocide to support the book's major themes of death and rebirth, the "fall from grace," and the cyclical nature of history.

[...]. Joyce, ever alert to historical-mythical parallels, saw the Armenians as similar to the Irish, both nations of "people living in the same place ... or also living in different places," dispersed, oppressed, persistent in their refusal to be destroyed.
[...]

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.