Use of Language in James Joyces Ulysses Essay - 2466 Words

Use of Language in James Joyces Ulysses In his essay â€Å"The Decomposing Form of Joyce’s Ulysses,† Henry Staten has argued â€Å"that Ulysses achieves some of its most characteristic effects by pressing the internal logic of mimesis to the limit, above all through onomatopoeia, which manifests in a peculiarly condensed way the self-contradictory character of the realist project† (Staten 174-5). Mimetic narrative and method are undone by an onomatopoeiac mode, which is conceived by Stephen â€Å"as the pure self-expression or self-annunciation of reality† (175): â€Å"Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Ulysses 3.2-3, emphasis added). â€Å"Listen: a fourworded speech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦Joyce pushes this process to its limit, rearranging syntax, deranging words and letters in unheard-of combinations. His literary parodying also furthers this process of ‘enriching’ or â⠂¬Ëœthickening’ the mediated nature of our overdetermined existence. â€Å"What Ulysses as a whole imitates †¦ is not any phenomenal form but rather its making and unmaking at the limit where imitative form becomes indiscernible from deconstruction† (S 178). Language and art are a â€Å"cracked lookingglass† (U 1.146). In â€Å"Aeolus,† newsprinting recasts this Joycean strategy, adding further figures and figuration to the text, each episode recasting the textual play of language: Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first maching [typesetter] jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. (7.174-7) Is â€Å"sllt† really â€Å"Orthographical† (7.164), or is Joyce joking with the inane futility of our attempts to form a correct system or mode of spelling and lettering? Also, the animate and inanimate in this passage are closely linked, linked by their inscription into the text, their ‘speech’ inscribed. Joyce’s â€Å"infidelity† to mimetic language, Staten argues, foregrounds the ambiguityShow MoreRelatedEssay on Ulysses by James Joyce1157 Words   |  5 PagesUlysses by James Joyce Many novelists directly reflect their life stories and personal circumstances in their works, so closely that the works may seem autobiographical. Although there are autobiographical parallels between James Joyces life and that of his characters in Ulysses, the novels scattered autobiographical details are more in the line of delightful puzzles to be ferreted out, rather than direct insights into Joyces life. 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