"Joyce e il cinema delle origini: Circe", by Marco Camerani

The connection between Ulysses and the seventh art has been widely discussed by scholars who have looked at the filmic interpretations of the novel or investigated the potential of film production as a form of intersemiotic translation that may serve as an analytical tool. Marco Camerani’s book adopts a reverse—albeit complementary—viewpoint and, instead of seeing cinema as the recipient of ideas and inspirations from Ulysses, focuses on the influence of cinema on Ulysses, in particular, on the “Circe” episode. Camerani is not the only author to have looked at film in Joyce rather than Joyce in film. His book, however, has two added values: on the one hand, as suggested by the title, it offers a systematized collection of the references to early movies and their structural patterns that can be traced in “Circe,” and, on the other, the volume presents the results of such research in a thoroughly enjoyable way that makes it appealing to both Joycean and film scholars, as well to a more general readership.