Special Author: James Joyce

Special author: James Joyce

Autumn term, 2016

Tutor: Martin Ryle

Scope and aims of the module

Joyce is a pre-eminent figure in modernist writing and in twentieth-century Irish culture. This module considers his entire prose oeuvre, addressing its formal and generic originality and its thematic engagements with language, the body, nation and history, and encouraging students to reflect on the connections between these aspects.

We begin by considering the place and time of Joyce’syouth in Ireland as depicted in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A particular focus will be on how these texts represent and inscribe authorship, which is marked by and registers its formative context, but which also imagines the possibility of escape.

The central weeks of the course are devoted to a close reading of Ulysses, in which we will engage with every chapter, developing and articulating an informed personal response to textual detail. In these weeks we will also note leading criticalperspectives on Joyce, especially those of postcolonial and feminist critics, and consider how his work anticipates subsequent theoretical ideas about language and subjectivity.

Finally we will sample something ofFinnegans Wake, in a seminar based on close reading of one or two passages (photocopies will be made available).

You will enjoy the module much more, and find yourself much better able to contribute to seminars, if you prepare by reading the texts in advance, and then re-reading before seminars. In particular, you should read the whole of Ulysses during the summer before the module begins.

Assessment

The course is assessed by a 3000-word essay submitted after the course ends. Please see Sussex Direct for exact dates and times of submission. Guidance on assessed work will be available once the course begins.

The chapters of Ulysses

Scholars and critics often use the chapter titles (most of them drawn from Homer’s Odyssey) that Joyce provided when the chapters of Ulysses were first published individually. These titleswere not included when the novel appeared as a book, but they are very helpful in referring to the text. Here’s a note of them, in order. Numbers in brackets refer to the first page of each chapter in the Penguin edition; the first phrase of each chapter is also given.

Telemachus (1) ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...’

Nestor (28) ‘You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?’

Proteus (45) ‘Ineluctable modality of the visible...’

Calypso (65) ‘Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish...’

Lotus-Eaters (85) ‘By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay....’

Hades (107) ‘Martin Cunningham, first,...’

Aeolus (147) ‘IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS’

Lestrygonians (190) ‘Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butterscotch.’

Scylla and Charybdis (235) ‘Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian...’

Wandering Rocks (280) ‘The superior, the very reverend...’

Sirens (328) ‘Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons...’

Cyclops (376) ‘I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D.M.P...’

Nausicaa (449) ‘The summer evening had begun to fold the world...’

Oxen of the Sun (499) ‘Deshil Holles Eamus.’

Circe (sometimes referred to as ‘Nighttown’) (561) ‘The Mabbot street entrance...’

III

Eumaeus (704) ‘Preparatory to anything else...’

Ithaca (776) ‘What parallel courses...’

Penelope (871) ‘Yes because he never did a thing like that...’

Week-by-week outline

Work in the seminars will include short tutor presentations, presentations by students (not assessed), class discussion and small group activities. The emphasis will always be on Joyce’s text, and we’ll attend closely to form as well as theme, aiming – especially when we come to Ulysses – to explore the intimate relation between the two.

Our readings in Ulysses follow the order in which chapters occur in the novel. However in some later weeks,we will want to refer back to earlier chapters that have common points of interest.

In most seminars, students will be asked to initiate discussion of specific topics and passages. What’s required will be made clear in advance, usually in the preceding week.

Week 1 Dubliners: the ‘nicely polished looking-glass’

We’ll explore Joyce’s short stories of Dublin lives thematically, contextually and from the point of view of genre and narration. These seem to be naturalist texts based on detached observation. At the same time, they elicit something more than a neutral response. Stories considered will include ‘Eveline’, ‘After the Race’, and ‘Grace’; we’ll finish by looking closely at ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’.

Week 2 Portraits of authorship: Dubliners, writing and the young Stephen/Joyce

We will focus on three stories inDubliners that involve writers and writing: ‘A Little Cloud’, ‘A Painful Case’ and ‘The Dead’. We will also beginour discussion of Stephen Dedalus as he appears in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Week 3

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: themes and contexts

We will discuss leading themes in Portrait, which include religion, Irish nationalism, and sexuality. How does Stephen’s idea of himself as a writer develop in and against this cultural and ideological context?

Week 4

Ulysses –Telemachus, Nestor, Proteus

These first three chapters focus on Stephen. We will consider how his figure here compares with the one we met in earlier texts; open the thematic question of nation, writing and history in Ulysses; and ask how these opening chapters confirm, or dispel, the idea that Ulysses is a difficult book.

Week 5

Ulysses –Calypso,Lotus-Easters, Hades, Aeolus, Lestrygonians

These chapters establish the character of Leopold Bloom. What did it mean to choose such a hero, especially in the moment of Irish national revolution? What, in formal and linguistic terms, is the ‘interior monologue’ which is so vital in Bloom’s characterisation – and how does it change the novel-form?

Week 6

Ulysses –Scylla and Charybdis, Wandering Rocks, Sirens

These chapters place Bloom and Stephen in the public spaces of the National Library and the Ormond bar. ‘Wandering Rocks’, like ‘Aeolus’ (considered in week 5), offers new ways of representing the city street. We’ll consider the development of the novel’s two male protagonists, and the nature of their paternal/filial relationship. Reading‘Sirens’, we encounter and assess the first of the constant sequence of formal innovations found in the second half of Ulysses; we shall also raise questions about language, subjectivity, gender and sexuality that recur in weeks 8 and 9.

Week 7 Reading week

There will be no seminar this week. You should use the week to begin thinking about your essay topic for this module. You should arrange a one-to-one meeting with the tutor duringoffice hours to discuss your ideas at any point between week 7 and week 11.

Week 8 Ulysses – Cyclops, Nausicaa, Oxen of the Sun

A reading of ‘Cyclops’ confirms that the centre of gravity in Ulysses has shifted, by this point in the book, decisively towards language. In all these chapters, language is a salientaspect of the reader’s engagement with the text. Our focus in the seminar will be on how ‘Cyclops’ orchestrates voices that speak of ‘race’, nation and identity; and on the nature, and sources, of Gerty’s ‘voice’ in ‘Nausicaa’.

Week 9 Ulysses –Circe

This chapter, sometimes referred to as ‘Nighttown’, is the longest in the novel. Its representation of mental life on the borders between consciousness and the unconscious is remarkable for its originality. At once expressionist film script and dream/nightmare, itis first of all an exploration of the anxieties, fears and fantasies of Bloom. It focuses on his sexuality but touches on many other themes, including his sense of belonging, and of alienation, in Ireland. Our discussion will consider both thematic and formal aspects.

Week 10 Ulysses – Eumaeus, Ithaca, Penelope

We’ll consider language and form in ‘Eumaeus’ and ‘Ithaca’ in relation to their status as concluding chapters in the narrative of Bloom and Stephen – or ‘Stoom’ and ‘Blephen’, as they are called in ‘Ithaca’. We’ll then turn to Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, at one time the most celebrated chapter of the novel. Recalling earlier scenes and chapters (especially ‘Sirens’ and ‘Nausicaa’), we will discuss Molly’s character and characterisation in relation to the novel’s representations of sexuality, gender and woman.

Week 11After Ulysses: ‘His dream monologue was over, of cause, but his drama parapolylogic had yet to be, affact’ (Finnegans Wake 474).

We will read two or three passages from Finnegans Wake; photocopies will be distributed in week 10. It’s impossible to gain a full sense of this baffling text in a week (or in several weeks), but we will identify some characteristic difficulties and rewards found in the ‘puling sample jungle of woods’ (112) that makes up Joyce’s final book.

Week 12

Work in progress: students will give a very short presentation on an aspect of their assessed essay.

Reading list

Core texts, recommended for student purchase

Please be sure to buy the recommended Penguin editions, which have useful notes. Seminar time will be wasted if people use varying editions, especially of Ulysses.

Joyce, James (first published 1914; this ed. currently in print) Dubliners London: Penguin (with introduction and notes by Terence Brown)

Joyce, James (first published 1914-5; this ed. currently in print) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManLondon: Penguin (with introduction and notes by Seamus Deane)

Joyce, James (first published 1922; this ed. currently in print) Ulysses London: Penguin (annotated students’ edition, with introduction and notes by Declan Kiberd)

Joyce, James (1939; currently in print) Finnegans Wake London: Faber; also available in Penguin (Photocopies will be available of passages from Finnegans Wake for initial study in week 11, so it is not essential to buy a copy. But you’ll need one if you decide to work on this text in your essay.)

You may also want to buy your own copy of The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (ed. Derek Attridge), available in paperback.

Critical, historical and scholarly readings

Some reading before the course begins will be useful in establishing the cultural and historical context for Joyce’s work. Derek Attridge’s Cambridge Companion and Ellmann’s biography (see below) are obvious, and useful, starting-points.

Our focus in seminars will be on Joyce’s texts, but once you begin to define the topic for your long essay, you will need to start finding scholarly books, chapters and articles relevant to it. Joyce has been the subject of a vast range of critical writing; even someone who read nothing else would struggle to keep up with new publications in the field. Online searches, and books on the Library shelves (with their Bibliographies), will guide you to material specially related to the topic of your essay. If you browse the shelves, or search the Library catalogue using ‘Joyce’ and ‘Ulysses’ as keywords, you will find – apart from those listed below – scores of book-length studies of Joyce’s work, by authors including Anthony Burgess, Marilyn French, S. L. Goldberg, Arnold Goldman, John Gross, Hugh Kenner, Patrick Parrinder...

Once the course begins, there will be a Study Direct site. This can include links to online journal articles posted by class members.

The list here is limited to books, all of which are in the Library.