The Book as World: James Joyce's Ulysses 0674078535

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(ABACUS) 'Afresh and compelling reading of Ulysses .' STUDIES IN THE NOVEL ,,'

THE BOOK , ASWORLD JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES

MARILYN ~' \ ?:(~4 ' FRENCH ,;4 r>. author 01

THE

WOMEN'S ROOM

• •

Marilyn French

THE BOOK AS WORLD James Joyce's Ulysses

Also by Marilyn French in Sphere Books

THE WOMEN'S ROOM THE BLEEDING HEART

First published in Great Britain in Abacus 1982 by Sphere Books Ltd 30-32 Gray's Inn Road, London WCIX 8JL Copyright C the President and Fellows of Harvard College 1976

To Isabel and Edward amor perentium subjective and objective genitive

This book: is sold subject to the condition that it shaD not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by HazeU Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks

Acknowledgments

Caritas, fortunately, is not found only in novels, but finding it in living beings is always wonderful. I thank John Kelleher for his wide measure of this virtue, as well as for the great learning he has shared with me and the continuous interest he has granted me. I thank William Hull, who first made Joyce shine for me, and whose rare gift, as teacher and man, is to combine scholarly knowledge and discipline with poetic genius. I thank Allan Davis for support and faith that transcend not only any call of duty but even time and space. I am grateful to A. Walton Litz and Hugh Kenner for their sympathetic readings and thoughtful suggestions, to Monroe Engel for his advice, to Jim Mahoney· and Salina Martin of the Dinand Library at Holy Cross for their good-humored help, and to Virginia laPlante of the Harvard University Press for her intelligence and carefulness. The help of my beloved family and friends, nameless here, must be acknowledged in other ways. For permission to quote from Ulysses, by James Joyce, copyright 1914, 1918 by Margaret Caroline Anderson and renewed 1942, 1946 by Nora Joseph Joyce, acknowledgment is extended to Random House, Inc., New York, and to The Bodley Head, London.

Contents

Introduction The Reader and the Journey The World as Book The Rock of Ithaca TheCity [51 The World [6) Jhe Universe [7) Coda: The Earth Conclusion Notes Index [1) [2) [3) [4)

1 3 23 54

93 126 207 243 262 271 290

Table The Two Journeys in Ulysses

6

Introduction

After fifty years of intelligent and dedicated exploration, the huge subcontinent of James Joyce's Ulysses still contains unclassified flora and fallna, untraced, streams. Careful scholarly research has· informed us in large part as to what is there, but in many cases we are still puzzled as to why it is there. The questions that remain to plague the honest critic range from the smallest-"Who is M'Intosh?" -to the largest-'What kind of statement does the novel make?" The last question may in fact never be answered to the satisfaction of all readers, just as there may never be agreement about the ending of King Lear. The greatest obstacle to a comprehensive view of the novel has been the impenetrability of its style. Although many critics from Edmund Wilson on have struck brilliant sparks from its. flint, the style of Ulysses remai~s inexplicable, and its relation to "content" obscurant rather than revelatory. Yet as early as 1938 Stuart Gilbert, who was partly a. spokesman for Joyce, stressed the importance of the style: 'The meaning of Ulysses, for it has a meaning and is not a mere photographic 'slice of life' -far from it-is not to be Sought in any analysis of the acts of the protagonists or the mental make-up of the characters; it is, rather, implicit in the technique of the various episodes; in nuances of language. in the thousand and one correspondences and allusions with which the book is studded."! Ulysses has an extraordinarily complex structure: it is possible to trace many different patterns and themes within it. Richard Ellmann, (or instance, links the chapters in dialectical triads: "if one chapter is external. the next is internal, and the third a mixture; similarly if one episode centres on land, th~ second will be watery, and the third

(2)

The Book lIS World

amphibious."l The Homeric correspondences and continuing allusions to such themes as Hamlet or the Ireland-Israel parallel are also structuring devices. But because there are so many of these, and no one appears to comprehend them all, it seems arbitrary to designate any one as the structuring principle of the novel. Only by focusing style can the basic structuring prin,ciples of Ulysses be revealed. Style, in the narrow sense, refers to the particular linguistic and formal handling of the characters and events in a work. A particular style conveys a particular tone; tone expresses point of view. The relation among these elements may be diagramed: Style (or technique): the visible linguistic' and formalaurface. Tone: the implicit emotional and intellectual content of the surface. Point of view: the attitudes that underlie the thought and feeling of the tone; the narrational standing place. Ultimately, all three are one, although for purposes of discussion they may be divided. But the style of Ulysses is not fixed; it changes almost from 'chapter to chapter. It is possible to define the point of view of one episode and yet to be unable to define that of the next. Beyond or behind the narrational point of view lies the authorial point of view, which must be distinguished before there can be any assurance as to what kind of statement is made in the novel. Critical assertions that the novel is nihilistic or affirmative have been based mainly on the critic's pers6nal sense of it. Support for either position