James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (February 2, 1882 - January 13, 1941), Irish
poet, dramatist and novelist was born in Rathgar, a
suburb of
born child of John
Stanislaus. A jolly, bibulous, pugnacious fellow, well known in
for his reckless extravagance, and his biting wit, the father was an impoverished
gentleman who, after having failed in a distillery business, turned to all kinds of
professions, including politics and tax collecting. Like his eldest son - there were
eventually six more children - he had a fine singing voice. Joyce's mother the former 949i83j
Mary Jane Murray, ten years younger than Stanislaus, was an accomplished pianist
whose life was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and her husband (in that order).
Joyce eas educated almost exclusively by Jesuits: at the highly prestigious
boarding school
entered "at the age of half-past six) and then - then for financial reasons - at the cheaper
day - school,
The first novel written by Joyce was considered an autobiographical one since
events of Joyce's life can be found in A. Portrait, but the novelist avoids the personal
impression by using a fictitious narrator who can be identical with the main character.
Impersonality is stresses by the third person narration, which shows that A Portrait is a
point of view.
The definition of art given by Joyce leads the reader towards an approach from
perspective of Thomas Aquinas's aesthetics, according to which a work of art must have:
'integritas" - "wholeness", the work of art is seen as one thing, (2) "consonantia" -
"harmony", the work of art is a sum of parts harmoniously combined, and (3)
"claritas" - "radiance" which symbolises the identity if the work of art with itself.
According to Joyce, "this supreme quality is felt by the artist when the aesthetic
image is first conceived in his imagination".
Another device in Joyce's symbolism is the use of personal names, generally
taken from mythology. The main character in A. Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, bears the
name of the Athenian architect whom built the labyrinth for Minos and made wings for
himself and his son Icarus to escape from
as an angel in A Portrait, Gabriel is the prince of fire and the angel of death, which is
opposed to the cold atmosphere outside. Sydney Bolt interprets this opposition as living
"death versus life in death" since the characters inside the house are alive at the cost of
their spiritual death.
The actuality of A Portrait consists in his ambiguity, which provokes a series of
antonymous interpretations. Reading the title we are somehow tempted to read it as a
more or less autobiographical novel. It is true that the author weaves its web using events
or his life as subject but the novel does not have an
autobiographical purpose.
the novel the reader notices its capacity of being interpreted either as a novel of an artist
about an artist or as a novel about a reader. Richard Brown suggests the possibility of
choosing between Stephen as Dedalus or only as Icarus, as an outcome of this oscillation
between the condition of the father or the son. At the beginning of the novel Stephen is
introduced as a listener to his father's story and as a reader of the text of the world.
His father told that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo.
The third paragraph, which should establish the identity of the boy and also of
Stephen's, is as simple as ambiguous. "He" can be either the listener or the teller of the
story therefore either the listener or the son, creator or creation endowed with creative
power, too. Brown states that "it does at any rate locate him from the start as a reader in
a world that is already full of texts, who seeks for but does not yet possess a full meaning
\of the signs around him."
Stephen as Icarus can be considered a prisoner of language; Dedalus was a
prisoner of his maze, too but the difference consists in the fact that Stephen / Icarus has to
discover, penetrate and understand the already existing language. His personal life was a
flight away of his "dear
to Paris.,
of his spiritual father. In Joyce's symbolism the spiritual father is God of the creation /
Dedalus who created the maze while his main character is either Christ or Lucifer.
Introducing Lucifer as an equivalent of Christ the author leads to rehabilitation of
the profane / evil which is paradoxically "the lightbringer". Mahaffey interprets this like
the "way of organising and authorising perception, including what we now call
logocentric or patriarchal logic. In the deeply divided world of literary studies as it is now
constituted, that makes him almost unique. Instead if instigates the monological model of
authority, he instigates a dialogue between the 'traditional' or logocentric methods of
interpretation and those that have been excluded; between rational, scholastic logic and
the unschooled apprehension of complex interconnection; between an ethos of
individualism and an ethos of community; between the world defined as 'male' and
'female' complement; between the referentiality of language and its materiality; between
conscious and unconscious desire'
Vicki Mahaffey establishes the existence of three authorities in Joyce's work: the
first is patriarchal, transcendental authority; the second is binary and paradoxical; the
third is collective and unconscious. Double authority refers to transcendental and material
authorities, although opposite they cannot exist separated, but they suppose each other so
that the final result is an authority combining both. The third authority is the authority of
an artist, of a creator who in the process of creation embodies two extremes, being at the
same time holy and profane.
In A Portrait these three kinds of authority are expressed by the same character,
Stephen, in different periods of his life from childhood to youth and again to his initial
state of father. Stephen oscillates between obedience and rebellion, between good and
evil, holy and profane. Actually the novel is an initiation of a young man with auctorial
aspirations.
Ulysses continues the previous work but it is more interesting and more complex
than A Portrait. Beyond the fact that it is an encyclopaedic work since it abounds in
references to mythology and history and even biology, Ulysses is also a novel synchronic
with the philosophy contemporaneous with Joyce. The whole work is a fusion if the
stream of consciousness, therefore monologue and the narrator's voice. The impossible
separation of the two can lead to a possible identification of the narrator with his
characters. The minute description as well as the stream of consciousness technique takes
the reader out from the chronological time which becomes dependent on the character's
perception. Joyce makes of his time an example of the Bergsonian duration.
If we return to the title of the novel, Ulysses, this one requires a comparison
between Joyce's and Homer's works. Having noticed the continuation of the main
character, Stephen, the reader also establishes that he as a modern equivalent of
Telemachus is looking for his father. Although the chapters of the novel are parallel to
those in Homer's work, an approach from this point of view should be a limitation of its
meanings.
Ulysses proposes a fictional world which, more than the image of one character or
another, creates the very powerful image of its author. "A relation can be established
between the characters and the narrative pattern since the latter contributes to the
achievement of the characters. Ulysses proposes "the adventure of the fictional discourse,
with the multiple forms it can assume, with the various voices are heard in it."
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