Ulysses by James Joyce

Helpful Web sites:

http://www.columbia.edu/~fms5/ulys.htm (annotated text of Ulysses); http://ulyssesseen.com/landing/ (comic book or graphic novel version) so far, only first three episodes)

Ulysses: the Gilbert Schema (designed by Joyce..change of color means nothing)

Adapted from Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963).

Freud, Jung and Joyce: conscious connection(Contemporary Review, July, 1994 by Liam F. Heaney

THE American poet, Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), whose writing, verse and prose demonstrates an evident interest in psychological enquiry indicated that he had been strongly influenced by Freud from about 1912 and goes on to suggest that everybody had been influenced by Freud whether they were aware of it or not. ....I

There is considerable evidence to show that Freud and Jung influenced the thinking of writers. .....The American psychologist, William James (1842-1910) used the term 'stream of consciousness' to refer to the way any one idea is fringed with overtones of others. Sinclair in her novel employs the technique with good effect, presenting events, sensations and images to illustrate a character's development.

The technique was further refined by Virginia Woolf in The Lighthouse (1927) and in The Waves (1931). In these novels, narration is set aside and replaced by sequential, poetical moments of living. ...

The novels of James Joyce, particularly Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), decisively influenced the development of the stream of consciousness. In these novels Joyce presents, in rapid succession, the thoughts, impressions, emotions and reminiscences of his characters often disregarding logical sequence or syntax. This is intended to mirror the complexities of the subconscious mind. ...

. In a letter to Joyce, regarding Ulysses, Jung comments that 'the 40 pages of non-stop run in the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches'.(1) We can assume from this that he found Joyce's novel intriguing if not baffling.

It is clear from the literature that both Freud and Jung were interested in exploring the key elements of personal worlds. At a basic level, the core of a personal world harbours a specific sense of consciousness and the flow of consciousness is characterised by the dimensions of time, space and emotional tone. In our multifarious experiences of the world around us our consciousness is engaged by, and moves from, one frame of meaning to another. In essence, 'the stream of consciousness' employed by writers, and particularly Joyce, originates from these key features of personal worlds. In Ulysses and in Finnegans Wake Joyce explores in minute detail the personal worlds of each of his characters and the major issues of existence, such as life, death, paternity and infidelity, among many others, are created and developed with evident mastery and precision. In these novels, it could be argued that Joyce underscores the intricate associations between the subconsciousness and the complex yet engaging world of reality.

James Joyce (1882-1941) has been accorded the distinction of writing the most celebrated and influential novel of the twentieth century: Ulysses (1922) is indeed an epic piece of writing with an extensive range and an evident versatility in exploring the subconscious mind. The principal characters, namely, Stephen Daedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, are all subject to the normal interruptions, dislocations and contractions of subconscious thought.(2) The 'stream of consciousness', sometimes referred to as the interior monologue, helps to give the characters individuality as well as showing how the subconscious mind of Stephen is continually speculating and shaping in response to the changing sounds, smells, sights and interactions that take place. In this sense, the thought processes and thought associations presented by Joyce mirror to some considerable degree the psychoanalytic technique proposed and developed by Freud and later modified by Jung.....

Jung proposed that the dreams, fairy stories and religions of different cultures and individuals had common themes. These emerge from archetypes in the 'collective unconscious'. Archetypes are thus seen as universal, symbolic representations of a particular person, object or experience. They are images and constellations of feeling which crystallise universal human experiences and which have somehow been passed on through the generations.(4) Such archetypes may express themselves as images which recur in mythologies and dreams, for example, the 'great mother', 'the wise old man' and 'the wandering hero' or they may take the form of a dynamic process, such as, a particular way of behaving in response to certain situations.(5)

Thus, to take a more immediate example from cinema screen and story, the archetypal image of good is represented by the strong and fearless Batman, while the archetypal images of innocence and evil are depicted by Vicki Vail and the Joker respectively.(6) Jung went on to argue that neurosis was treated by integrating the individual consciousness with the archetypal symbols of the collective unconscious. Jung further indicated that disunity of the personality resulted in mental illness, while mental health was characterised by order and unity.(7)

Although, Joyce vehemently denied being influenced by the ideas of Freud and Jung, referring to them derisively as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, his writings indicate that not only was he very familiar with the substance of their ideas and theories but that he could also apply them when exploring the minds of his characters. Lionel Trilling, (1951), proposed that: 'James Joyce with his interest in the numerous states of receding consciousness, with his use of words which point to more than one thing, with his pervading sense of the interrelation and interpenetration of all things, and, not least important, his treatment of familial themes, has perhaps most thoroughly and consciously exploited Freud's ideas.'(8)

Whether or not this indicates that Joyce was directly influenced by Freud and Jung is not the salient point here. Joyce, through his exploration of dreams and the subconscious shows Freudian and Jungian influences and arguably this adds to the universal significance and meaning of his work. Indeed, all of us have a vested interest in understanding how our minds respond and decode the complex world of reality that we encounter on a daily basis. These were the central concerns of Freud and Jung.

It is evident from this discussion that psychological concepts and theories, particularly those related to psychoanalysis, personal worlds and the 'workings' of the inner consciousness, have been used by writers to develop storylines and to delineate more fully characters within their works. Joyce clearly owes some debt to the work of Freud and Jung and his writings indicate that the ideas postulated by these psychologists did find considerable scope in his writings. Jung himself, having read Ulysses, referred to Joyce as a prophet and went on to say: 'Like every true prophet, the artist is the unwitting mouth-piece of the psychic secrets of his time, and is often as unconscious as a sleepwalker. He supposes that it is he who speaks, but the spirit of the age is his prompter, and whatever this spirit says is proved true by its effects.(9)'

In conclusion, it might be suggested that the writer as observer, must encounter the reality of experience and forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race.(10) This is what Joyce set out to do. The psychologist, who is observer, analyst and indeed scientist, also seeks to increase our understanding of the world and our responses to it. The fusion of scientific and literary thinking in this respect, whether consciously or unconsciously achieved, is a dynamic, enriching and unquestionably a necessary process, if our understanding of the mind and its associations and connections with reality are to be realised.

NOTES/REFERENCES

1. Jung, C. G. (1973). Letters. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

2. McHugh, R. and Harmon, M. (1982). Short History of Anglo-Irish Literature. Wolfhound Press, p.240.

3. Stevens, Richard. (1983). Freud and Psychoanalysis: an Exposition and Appraisal. Open University Press.

4. Jung, C. G. (1968). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (2nd edn.), in Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part I, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

5. Stevens, Richard. (1988). 'Making Sense of Objective Experience', D307: Social Psychology. Milton Keynes. The Open University, pp.77-135.

6. Feldman, Robert S. (1993). Understanding Psychology. New York, McGraw-Hill, p.487.

7. Jung, C. G. (1977). Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (recorded and edited by A. Jaffe, translated by R. and C. Winston), London, Collins.

8. Trilling, Lionel. (1951). The Liberal Imagination. London, p.40.

9. Jung, C. G. (1966). Ulysses: a Monologue. Collected Works, Bollingen XX, New York, 15, 122-23.

10. Joyce, J. (1916). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Penguin Books, p.253.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_n1542_v265/ai_15695155/

Modern Troys: Joyce's Ulysses Posted by bmulligan on May 02, 2009

Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

Ulysses 9.1044-1046

James Joyce’s Ulysses is a modernist reinvention of Homer’s Odyssey through more than just allusion. The novel takes place during the course of one day (June 16, 1904) in Dublin, Ireland, with the final chapter taking place during the morning of the next day. It mostly follows the stream-of-consciousness of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom throughout their day. In the Homeric parallel, Dedalus corresponds to Telemachus, Leopold Bloom corresponds to Odysseus, and Molly Bloom corresponds to both Calypso and Penelope. It is important to note that not much happens plot-wise; the reader learns most about the characters and past events through the stream-of-consciousness of the three characters and their interactions with others throughout the novel. The first three chapters are told from the perspective of Stephen Dedalus, an aloof, young teacher and writer/poet who is tormented by the loss of his mother and the current state of the world that surrounds him. The second section of the novel (chapters 4-15) focuses on Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertiser who is struggling with his estrangement from his wife, Molly. The third section (chapters 16-18) focuses on the interaction between Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, who are represented as father-son through the Homeric parallel even though they are not actually related. The final chapter, chapter 18, is Molly’s stream-of-consciousness; up until this point, the reader has only understood Molly through the lens of other characters. Although vulgar, Molly is self-aware and knowledgeable of the world around her, and is often frank about her perceptions. Other than providing an epic reading experience, Joyce’s Ulysses also acts as profound writing experiment that employs multiple forms of expression such as newspaper headlines, drama playtext, and pragmatic questions-and-answers.

http://iris.haverford.edu/ilium/2009/05/02/modern-troys-joyces-ulysses/ Posted by bmulligan on May 02, 2009

The Writer JAMES JOYCE By Paul Gray (Monday, Jun. 08, 1998)

James Joyce once told a friend, "One of the things I could never get accustomed to in my youth was the difference I found between life and literature." All serious young readers notice this difference. Joyce dedicated his career to erasing it and in the process revolutionized 20th century fiction.

The life he would put into his literature was chiefly his own. Born near Dublin in 1882, James Augustine Aloysius was the eldest of the 10 surviving children of John and Mary Jane Joyce. His father was irascible, witty, hard drinking and ruinously improvident; his mother, a devout Roman Catholic, helplessly watched her husband and family slide into near poverty and hoped for a happier life in the hereafter. James' entire education came at the hands of the Jesuits, who did a better job with him than they may have intended. By the time the young Joyce graduated from University College, Dublin, in 1902, he decided he had learned enough to reject his religion and all his obligations to family, homeland and the British who ruled there. Literature would be his vocation and his bid for immortality.

He fled Ireland into self-imposed exile late in 1904, taking with him Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway who was working as a hotel chambermaid in Dublin when Joyce met her earlier that year. (On hearing that his son had run off with a girl named Barnacle, John Joyce remarked, playing on her last name, "She'll never leave him." And, proving puns can be prophetic, she never did.)

Joyce departed Dublin with nearly all the narratives he would ever write already stored in his memory. What remained for him to do was transform this cache into an art that could measure up to his own expectations.

As he and Nora and then their two children moved among and around European cities--Pola, Trieste, Zurich, Rome, Paris--Joyce found clerical and teaching jobs that provided subsistence to his family and his writing. His first published book of fiction, Dubliners (1914), contained 15 stories short on conventional plots but long on evocative atmosphere and language. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) provided a remarkably objective and linguistically complex account of Stephen Dedalus, i.e. James Joyce, from his birth to his decision to leave Dublin in pursuit of his art.

Portrait did not sell well enough to relieve Joyce's chronic financial worries, but his work by then had attracted the attention of a number of influential avant-gardists, most notably the expatriate American poet Ezra Pound, who believed a new century demanded new art, poetry, fiction, music--everything. Such supporters rallied to promote Joyce and his experimental writings, and he did not disappoint them.

He began Ulysses in 1914; portions of it in progress appeared in the Egoist in England and the Little Review in the U.S., until the Post Office, on grounds of alleged obscenity, confiscated three issues containing Joyce's excerpts and fined the editors $100. The censorship flap only heightened curiosity about Joyce's forthcoming book. Even before Ulysses was published, critics were comparing Joyce's breakthroughs to those of Einstein and Freud.

Joyce received the first copy of Ulysses, with its blue binding and white lettering, on his 40th birthday, in 1922. It was his most exhaustive attempt yet to collapse the distinction between literature and life.

First of all, Joyce tossed out most of the narrative techniques found in 19th century fiction. Ulysses has no discernible plot, no series of obstacles that a hero or heroine must surmount on the way to a happy ending. The book offers no all-knowing narrator, a la Dickens or Tolstoy, to guide the reader--describe the characters and settings, provide background information, summarize events and explain, from time to time, the story's moral significance.

With so many traditional methods of narrative abandoned, what was left? Perhaps the clearest and most concise description of Joyce's technique came from the critic Edmund Wilson: "Joyce has attempted in Ulysses to render as exhaustively, as precisely and as directly as it is possible in words to do, what our participation in life is like--or rather, what it seems to us like as from moment to moment we live."

A first reading of Ulysses can thus be a baffling experience, although no book more generously rewards patience and fortitude. Stephen Dedalus reappears, still stuck in Dublin, dreaming of escape. Then we meet Leopold Bloom, or rather we meet his thoughts as he prepares breakfast for his wife Molly. (We experience her thoughts as she drifts off to sleep at the end of the book.)

Ulysses is the account of one day in Dublin--June 16, 1904, Joyce's private tribute to Nora, since that was the date on which they first went out together. The book follows the movements of not only Stephen and Bloom but also hundreds of other Dubliners as they walk the streets, meet and talk, then talk some more in restaurants and pubs. All this activity seems random, a record of urban happenstance.

But nothing in Ulysses is truly random. Beneath the surface realism of the novel, its apparently artless transcription of life's flow, lurks a complicated plan. Friends who were in on the secret of Ulysses urged Joyce to share it, to make things easier for his readers. He resisted at first: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality."

Joyce later relented, and so the world learned that Ulysses was, among many other things, a modern retelling of Homer's Odyssey, with Bloom as the wandering hero, Stephen as Telemachus and Molly as a Penelope decidedly less faithful than the original. T.S. Eliot, who recognized the novel's underpinnings, wrote that Joyce's use of classical myth as a method of ordering modern experience had "the importance of a scientific discovery."

Ulysses made Joyce famous, although not always in a manner to his liking. When a fan approached him and asked, "May I kiss the hand that wrote Ulysses?" Joyce said, "No, it did lots of other things too." But more important, Ulysses became a source book for 20th century literature. It expanded the domain of permissible subjects in fiction, following Bloom not only into his secret erotic fantasies but his outdoor privy as well.

Its multiple narrative voices and extravagant wordplay made Ulysses a virtual thesaurus of styles for writers wrestling with the problem of rendering contemporary life. Aspects of Joyce's accomplishment in Ulysses can be seen in the works of William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, all of whom, unlike Joyce, won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

But the only author who tried to surpass the encyclopedic scope of Ulysses was Joyce himself. He spent 17 years working on Finnegans Wake, a book intended to portray Dublin's sleeping life as thoroughly as Ulysses had explored the wide-awake city. This task, Joyce decided, required the invention of a new language that would mime the experience of dreaming. As excerpts from the new work, crammed with multilingual puns and Jabberwocky-like sentences, began appearing in print, even Joyce's champions expressed doubts. To Pound's complaint about obscurity, Joyce replied, "The action of my new work takes place at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?"

Today, only dedicated Joyceans regularly attend the Wake. A century from now, his readers may catch up with him.

TIME senior writer Paul Gray wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on James Joyce's short fiction.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988495,00.html