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Paragraph 1:
The passage is interesting both from the viewpoint of its pictorial mode (image-building) and the mode of narration. As to the pictorial manner: in what order do these details appear: colour, volume, sound, contour, motion?
Concerning the mode of narration: whose viewpoint is presented: the author’s? the character’s? or both at once? How can you prove it?
What is meant by “fourworded wavespeech”? What phonetic devices participate in creating imagery?
Paragraph 2:
What are the two leading images of the passage? What is the association between them based upon? What stylistic devices help to build the images? What shows eternal motion?
Paragraph 3:
What kind of association justifies the transition from the second paragraph to the third? How does the rhythm change, if compared to passage 2? Does the rhythm increase or ease the psychological tension of the moment? Show the changes of the rhythm within the passage.
Paragraph 4:
What are the revolting, disgusting details that still increase the tension in paragraph 4? What is the central idea of the paragraph (which, due to the peak of psychological tension, may be accepted as the central idea of the whole excerpt under analysis? What devices help the author to bring the idea home to the readers?
Paragraph 5:
To ease the tension, the character shields himself off with irony. Explain the ironic impact of the paragraph.
Paragraphs 6 -7:
The climax is over, the character’s mood changes. Does the ironic colouring remain or does it disappear? What role do the quotations play? What associations are they based on?
Paragraphs 1 - 7:
So, which images in the whole excerpt emerge retrospectively as the leading ones? How are they connected with the idea(s) expressed?
1. James Joyce was a deliberate, conscious artist who drew on the two great currents of the 19th century European literature, aestheticism and naturalism. At the same time, Joyce was as original a writer as it is possible to be. This originality makes him difficult to classify. If we define a poet as a man interested in language for its own sake, Joyce should be called a poet, though it is in prose fiction that he was to show his real originality. Joyce became the greatest technical innovator in the history of fiction. But he was not detached or scientific. There was an emotional drive behind his choice of material. In the first third or so in ULYSSES the only important technical innovation is the interior monologue. In this the thoughts of the character are recorded directly, with all the ellipses and wanderings of actual thinking. He buries symbolic clues and leitmotifs in his monologues. Nothing in them is arbitrary. Later on Joyce used many other technical innovations.
Sum up the main points of the passage paying special attention to the points that may help the reader understand the passage under discussion. Add a few words of your own to characterise Joyce’s interior monologue.
2. Joyce’s characters’ psychological process is one of expansion and contraction: an encounter - a memory - an association of ideas starts his mind into extra activity, which having reached a climax, ebbs away. Joyce’s method resembles that of the cinema in giving a more or less sustained close-up to be followed by a fade-out to normal size again or by a shifting to a different scene or a different strand of the story.
Give a consistent description of an episode from the excerpt according to the following scheme:
an encounter - a memory - an association of ideas - extra activity of the mind - climax of the mind’s activity - the fading out of the mind’s activity
e.g.: an encounter: Stephen sees the writhing weeds in the water: “Day by day, night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary…”
a memory: “… they sigh. St. Ambrose heard it…”
an association: “sigh of leaves and waves…”
extra activity of the mind: “to no end gathered, vainly then released… loom of the moon…”
climax of the mind’s activity: - the development of the mood metaphor: “Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men…”
the fading out of the mind’s activity: “…she draws a toil of waters.”
That is the end of the episode, next comes another encounter, and the process starts over again just like the waves.
3. Here is a set of questions that an incompetent but inquisitive reader might ask in the process of reading trying to find out the purpose of the author.
Where does the action take place? (Why is the place chosen? What ideas does it give rise to in the character’s mind? Why does Stephen remember the drowned man?…)
What sort of person is the character whose interior monologue is given in the excerpt? (Is he a sensitive man? Has he got a vivid imagination? Did he receive a classical education?…)
What mood is the character in?
Give answers to those questions. Add other questions to the list that to your mind help clarify the author’s purpose and ideas.
4. The average reader approaching “Ulysses” for the first time had enough difficulty in adjusting himself to the new technique in which the story has as good as vanished and, along with it, the old type of coherent characterisation. But on top of that difficulty was the one caused by Joyce’s own use of language. Again, Joyce was too much of an artist. That is, being delighted with the artistic joy of playing with words, he indulged his pleasure freely with all the subtlety of an agile mind. He telescoped words together, as in “ evoluation ” (evolution + evaluation) and “ heroticism ” (heroism + eroticism), he punned (“ allbright” - all right), imitated sounds, coined words (“ saltblue ”), drew in a wide range of foreign words, etc.
Give examples of some of the above mentioned devices. Explain the purpose of each.
5. Many of Joyce’s linguistic devices had obvious justification. The jostling of meaning when two or three words were telescoped together could give a value to each quite different from their use singly, for the fusion might release irony, mockery, humour or some other feeling. Such telescoping of words frequently takes place in any mind when associated ideas overlap, and its use is therefore particularly apt in the inner monologue. The association of ideas which Joyce makes great use of can indeed be justified on many grounds: it is not only psychologically true, but it is economical, it stimulates the reader, it is clearly a natural characteristic of Joyce himself, and it is a kind of intellectual entertainment.
a) What are the characteristic features of James Joyce as a personality?
b) What kind of entertainment did you experience?
6. “Ulysses” is rightly to be seen as an epic of disintegration. But it is at the same time a most integrated book. Speak of the logical nature of the character’s associations. Use the excerpt under discussion and the passage below.
“Ba. Who knows what they are always flying for. Insects? That bee last week got into the room playing with the shadow on the ceiling. Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too never find out what they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve? They have to fly over the ocean and back. Lot must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of ocean-going steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like sea-cows. Out of that, blood curse to you. Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s round…”
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