Academic literature on the topic 'James Joyce's Ulysses'

The comic in Ulysses needs more attention. The few studies that exist disregard the problems: the adoption of assumptions which limit discussion, the inconsistent terminology, the lingering prejudice regarding comedy as inferior to tragedy. This study begins by examining the common assumption that comedy in Ulysses is either a restraint on Joyce's saeva indignatio, or an affirmation of life; and then looks at the difficulties of comic criticism. Chapter two considers modern comedy, distinguishes three schools of theory, and indicates how these will be considered in relation to Ulysses. Chapter three, countering the assumptions observed in chapter one, discusses the book's refusal to indulge the reader's desire for certainty, illustrating this with a criticism of Kenner's conception of Joycean irony and Goldberg's reading of the 'Nausicaa' episode. Chapter four examines Mulligan: "in risu veritas: for nothing so reveals us as cur laughter" (Joyce). Using Freud's study of aggressive jokes, it works backwards from 'Circe,' where Mulligan is revealed in his true (motley) colours. Chapter five evaluates Bloom's comic/ heroism, working with Bergson's study of social laughter and against Darcy O'Brien. The final chapter considers farce, particularly in 'Cyclops' and 'Circe,' using Bergson's body-as-machine theory and Bakhtin's study of the medieval carnival in Rabelais and his World<.em>.

Following and at times reworking the relation between language, society and selfhood in the antifoundationalist philosophies of Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty, the thesis develops the idea of the novel as a kind of conversation. The thesis takes James Joyce's Ulysses as a progression of thought and style in which its three principal characters, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom, expound their views and then lapse into silence as part of an ongoing conversation. Three episodic conversations in particular are discussed: for Stephen, Scylla and Charybdis; for Bloom, Cyclops; and for Molly, Penelope. These conversations, it is suggested, parallel Joyce's evolving novelistic theories, and mark a movement from a metaphysical, to a scientized, and eventually to an ironist understanding of selfhood and society.

This thesis reconsiders James Joyce’s representation of advertising and Dublin’s consumer culture in Ulysses. Against earlier, generalising accounts, it applies a carefully historicising methodology to demonstrate the cultural specificity of Joyce’s engagement. It does so in three ways. To begin with, it establishes that Irish consumerism did not simply follow British advances, but developed in a distinct and inflected fashion. Chapters 2 and 3 show that while Joyce incorporates all of the material characteristics of Dublin’s relatively advanced consumer culture, he downplays its advertising industry, making it appear less developed in 1904 than was historically the case. Secondly, it analyses the distortions introduced by Joyce’s own historical remove from the consumer culture he depicts. Chapter 4 identifies for the first time the sources of Joyce’s “Advertising” notes from his so-called “Notes on Business and Commerce,” and establishes that his representation of Bloom’s advertising consciousness reflects advances in advertising theory that only got seriously underway in the decade between 1904, when the novel is set, and 1914, when Joyce began to write it. Finally, having analysed the material and compositional background to Joyce’s portrayal of early-twentieth-century consumerism, this thesis analyses Joyce’s engagement with two of its dominant ideologies. Chapter 5 concentrates on the ‘Lestrygonians’ and ‘Ithaca’ episodes to argue that Joyce lays bare the overdetermined nature of colonial consumption, depicting the naturalisation of British commodities on the Irish market, and contesting the spurious claim to disinterestedness presented by imperial consumerist discourses. Chapter 6 develops intertextual readings of the ‘Nausicaa’ chapter to show that Joyce’s narrative is even more fully comprised of the language of female-oriented advertising than has been recognised. It argues that the chapter responds to a particular ideological complex, in which consumerist imperatives struggled with more conservative patriarchal interests. Overall, this thesis brings together historical, genetic and intertextual critical approaches to uncover the stylistic and chronological manipulations involved in Joyce’s fictionalisation of early-twentieth-century Irish consumerism. It argues that Ulysses stands as both a reflection of this crucial period of socio-economic change, and a politicised response to its dominant ideological coercions.

When I first encountered James Joyce's Ulysses, at the age of sixteen, I was predictably unprepared for the book. Its shifts in narrative voice, extensive use of stream of consciousness, and ostensible disorder make the book a daunting task for the first time reader. Fortunately, my age allowed me to consign my lack of understanding to naivete, rather than, as did many early critics, to authorial deficiencies. In addition to my ignorance regarding Ulysses itself, I was completely unaware of the extensive critical debates surrounding its myriad aspects, from the supposed "communion" between Stephen and Bloom in "Ithaca" to the fact that the very edition I was reading (the Gabler text) was the source of considerable controversy in the Joycean community.<br>Having experienced frustrations common to many readers of the book, I can understand why so many readers "give up" on Ulysses. Obviously, I was drawn back to the book, but by neither its encyclopaedic nature, nor the various games it plays with literary traditions, nor any other "technical" aspect of the author's virtuosity; I was, of course, ignorant to these features. Rather, I found---and continue to find---Ulysses an extremely compelling work of art because of the manner in which it seems to be energized with "warm fullblooded life," in the words of Bloom. The impressive extent to which Joyce has successfully created ostensibly real human beings is both remarkable and often remarked upon. Less well documented are the underlying philosophical assumptions which inform Joyce's meticulous method of characterization. The present study of Ulysses aims to uncover these assumptions.