This book follows several major European literary echoes still reverberating since the
mysterious emergence of such archetypal figures as Faust Hamlet Quixote and Don Juan
alongside lingering ancient and medieval protagonists in the Renaissance. Four centuries of
attempts to redefine modern identity are traced against the evolution of a new genre of
totalizing encyclopaedic literature the humoristic tradition which re-weaves the positive and
negative strands of the European and today also New World grand narrative. The book's method
inspired by Joyce is to listen to recurrent motifs in the cultural flow from Humanism to
Postmodernism for clues to an identity transcending the personal.
