The proposition that the mind and art of James Joyce were shaped by Richard Wagner should not surprise Joyce's students. The quickest of glances suggests, at the very least, a strong artistic kinship: both artists exploit the resources of myth, emphasize sexual themes, pursue “totality” of form and subject matter, and represent the “modern” or “revolutionary” in art. Joyce's knowledge of Wagner has long been evident to readers of his letters and critical writings, and Joyce's impressions of Wagner's music and stagecraft have been recorded by his associates. Indeed, as chapter 1 will show, Wagner's position in early twentieth-century culture made him virtually inescapable, and Joyce, himself a progressive artist and a sensitive musician, had his own reasons for taking the German composer into account.

Over the past twenty-five years, a number of published articles, together with occasional papers at scholarly conferences, have helped establish the importance of the subject and have begun to suggest what sort of form a thorough investigation might take. Among my predecessors in this territory I identify three scholars whose footprints are most distinct: David Hayman, whose work on Tristan and Isolde in Exiles and Finnegans Wake assesses the relative contribution of Joyce's several sources for the legend; William Blissett, whose pioneering articles on Wagner's presence in modern literature have suggested several useful lines of inquiry and directed my reading into many fruitful areas; and Matthew Hodgart, who has identified scores of subtle allusions in the Wake.