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Balsamo, Gian. "An Adaptive-Landscape Model For Joyce’s Ulysses." Culture And Religion 8, no. 1 (2007): 71–88.

Related topics:

Creation and Making
Irish History Transformed
Language and Linguistics
Obedience and Rebellion
Reproduction
Thought and Action

Link to citation page: http://www.worldcat.org/title/an-adaptive-landscape-model-for-joyces-ulysses/oclc/4902320374&referer=brief_results

Link to full text: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14755610601157138#.U6wxYSu4Eww

Gian Balsamo applies evolutionary biological theory to Stephen Dedalus's formation of poetic self-identity in Ulysses. Although we may at first question the disciplinary compatibility of this approach, at a basic level Balsamo's premise is suggested by the text itself: "As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image" (U 9.376-8). Just as the current scientific model of reproduction and gene expression considers an organism's development dependent on the tension between its inherited DNA and its environment, Balsamo considers Stephen's artistic persona a result of his discerning navigation through established literary tradition and present cultural context. His identity is thus described as an "intentional consciousness" (81, 84, 85), self-aware of its influences (though certainly no less-influenced) and seeking innovation through selective reincorporation: "Distinct dicta and tropes from received tradition, as well as a selection of their available interpretations, are resuscitated from their fossilized condition via reciprocal cross-pollination, engendering thereby a hybrid, posthumous, heretofore unthought-of posterity of phenotypes" (73). Subsequently, Balsamo processes the adaptive non-dualism of Stephen's intentional consciousness, an understanding modeled on scientific discourse, through several humanist discourses. These include: Saint Augustine's metaphysical philosophy, which "conglomerates body and soul," much as "Stephen conglomerates necessity and freedom" while "evolutionary biology conglomerates nature and nurture" (82); Aristotle's musings on factuality and potentiality, echoed in Stephen's consternation about poetry's responsibility toward versus defeat of historical objectivity (U 2.48-52); and Dante's conception of poetic authority (76-78)—specifically his 'figure of linguistic bind,' represented by poetic permutations of aueio, as into the prominent vowel sequence A.E.I.O.U. of "Scylla and Charybdis" (U 9.213). Balsamo concludes that while "we have no access whatsoever to a palpable and measurable individual intentionality," we can obtain legitimate information about Stephen's, and Joyce's, conscious intentions through their "organismic manifestations: acts or gestures or deeds—in the specific case of a fictional character and/or its author: speech acts, introspective monologues, soliloquies, as well as all sorts of described actions," which "documentabl[y]" situate their consciousnesses in the wider cultural and historical narrative (84).

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