Hypercanonical Joyce: Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, creative disaffiliation, and the global afterlives of Ulysses

Roughly two-thirds of the way through Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), there is a section highly redolent ‘Penelope’ episode James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). Commonly referred to as ‘Summer’, section’s similarity has not gone unnoticed among either Joyce or Selvon scholars; date, however, only J. Dillon Brown (2013) offered substantive reading connection. This article seizes on relative absence critical discussion in studies consider what might be particular responsibilities that bears when global afterlives. Drawing debates around concept modernism, I discuss terms canonisation and his use ‘diffusionist’ models literary history. Building Kandice Chuh’s (2019) analysis combined effects liberal representational politics hypercanonicity studies, contend future reception influence should seek establish mutually transformative intercultural dialogue, which turn requires opening field unsettling position – and, end, propose novel provides an exemplary model engagement with ‘creative disaffiliation’.