oyce said, My imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesnt when I read Freud or

Jung. This volume is the first extended examination of the connections between Vico
and Joyce. Joyce employed Vicos New Science as the basis of Finnegans Wake, as he
employed Homers Odyssey as the basis of Ulysses. In what ways are Vico and Joyce
similar? To what extent is Vico an influence on Joyce? And in what ways can Vicos
philosophy be newly understood when seen in relation to Joyces use of it? This book
suggests ways to see both thinkers anew.
Vico and Joyce is divided into three major parts: Cycles and History, in which
Vicos famous conception of the course and recourse of historical events is examined
in relation to Joyces use of this idea in Finnegans Wake; Joyce and Vico, in which
the relationship between the two thinkers is approached more from the side of Joyce
than Vico; Language and Myth, in which the similarities of Vicos and Joyces
grasp of language and imaginative forms of thought are considered.
This book opens up a relationship and set of ideas whose time has come. In the last
decade there has been an exciting renaissance in the study of Vico that originated in
the English-speaking world and spread back to Italy. Joyce has been the one major
twentieth-century figure through which most English readers have come to know
something of Vico. To consider them together opens up new avenues for our
understanding of the imagination, memory, and the cyclic course of human history.