Vowel Alternation in Ulysses

Sample Close Readings of Vowel Alternations

I. Realist (Representational) Frameworks

A. Perceptual/Aural
1. Semi-lexical onomatopoeia

Twice in the novel, the phrase "dribs and drabs" (U 4.131, 11.620-1) is used to describe the easy (over)spending of money on alcohol. Although "drib" could be understood to function with its literal meaning, since the word can refer to both "a petty quantity" (drib, n. OED) and the action of "go[ing] little by little" (drib, v. OED), none of the definitions of "drab"—which mostly concern prostitution (OED)—seem to apply to these two scenes of social spending. Paired, the words may thus better be understood as a vowel alternation set in which the higher to lower, [i] to [æ] interchange creates an auditory impression of slight falling, playing also on phonetic similarity with the lexical onomatopoeic word "drip."

Another example of semi-lexical onomatopoiea comes in "Sirens" with the vowel alternation between "confessed [and] confused" (U 11.603), possibly less immediately recognizable due to their more complex phonetic composition. Here, the words do not logically operate with their standard definitions (except as puns, satirizing the social interaction between Simon Dedalus and Father Cowley); rather, the vowel alternation from [ɜ] to [u] within the conf_s(s)ed [kanfVst] consonant structure evokes the aural quality of Simon’s piano playing. Specifically, the limitation to two words illustrates his partial attempt, soon halted, to play the piece to Father Crowley’s specifications: "in the original. One flat" (U 11.602), where the [ɜ] should be considered the flat note, since it is slightly lower by a half step and may be considered "out of tune" when paired with the more sonorous, back vowel [u] ("Flat (music)").

2. Dialect

The format of "Circe" (U 15) is unique in that it grants a distinct, visible voice to its range of actors. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that in this episode we find a particularly lucrative variety of accents, regional dialects, sociolects, and other cultural speech characterizations. Some of these representations are achieved via stigmatized grammatical expressions, others via vocabulary selection, and still others via phonetic deviation (represented orthographically) from standard English. We can observe an interesting interplay between these representations of culturally differentiated speech and the [fVr] / [fVrz] vowel alternation set, which includes forms like fires, fear, feirce, farst, first, force, fours, furze, furs, and fair, sprinkled non-contiguously throughout the episode. In many cases these words are linked to the locality of Dublin and/or to class distinctions, which both have specific dialects or sociolects typical for their particular speech communities. For example, the [ɜ] tokens "furze," referring to a type of Irish thistle (U 15.1454), and "furs" (U 15.1046) draw a contrast between the Irish proletariat language of Bloom’s Boys and the fancy, decorous language of the Dublin society lady Mrs. Bellingham.

Words in this set also appear in overt discussions of accent between characters; for example, when Bloom reckons that the Zoe is "of good stock by [her] accent" and proceeds to ask if she is "a Dublin girl," her disassociation with what she perceives to be the lower-prestige, Irish mode of speech utilizes the [i] token: "No bloody fear. I’m English" (U 15.1336-47). Here, the strength of Zoe’s reaction to his presumptions about her Dublin-esque dialect lies not only in her inclusion of an expletive, but in her idiom’s literal sense, concentrated in the [fVr] word, that the local linguistic culture isn’t just inaccurate or dis-preferred, but downright scary.

3. Music

During "Hades," the (non-lexical) onomatopoeic wheels of Paddy Dignam’s coffincart, which first emit "a sharp grating cry," are subsequently represented with a more lyrical, contiguous vowel alternation set: "The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here" (U 6.638, 640). Here, the consonant structure is an open-ended r_, allowing each word to sonorously flow into the next word, so that the articulatory conclusion of the consonant structure is postponed until the pronunciation of the next word is underway. This sort of looping structure evokes the cyclical motion of the revolving wheels, as well as the continuous breath and extended tonality of singing. While their first sound (U 6.638), in its rough alliterative contact with the gravel underfoot, comes off as appropriately mournful/pained for the funerary setting, the smooth kinesis of the second, more lyric sound (U 6.40) is not well suited to cemeteries or death. The uncomfortable auditory impropriety of the vowel alternation set’s "cheerful or merry song" (see lilt,n. and OED) is acknowledged by the disembodied, divinely addressed "mustn’t lilt here" in the commentary immediately following the alternation; at this moment, the sense of "lilt" as in musical "swing" (lilt, n. OED, definition 2) may also be at play, aptly characterizing the up and down, back and forth [i] > [a], [i] > [a] > [u] interchange in vowel quality.

II. Historical Linguistics

In the library of "Scylla and Charybdis," Stephen leads the group of men in a biographical analysis of Shakespeare’s works as "record[ings]" of his family members, which often involve nesting their deaths in a partially fictionalized historical timeline, for example, his mother within Coriolanus (U 9.879-881) and his son within King John (U 9.881-2). Primed to think about the relationship between literature, biography, and historical trajectory, we then get the entrance of the librarian, marked by the repetition of a qu_(c)k [kwVk] consonant structure, with a vowel switch from [e] to [æ] in the final token: "The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack" (U 9.887-8). Amid this vowel alternation set, we see suggestions of personal biographical details, like his bibliographic profession and religious affiliation, as well as suggestions of time and/or movement, ending on an ambiguous token which might mean either ‘duck sound’ (quack, int. and n.3 OED) or ‘medical impostor’ (quack, n.2 OED). Because the early Middle English (medieval) orthographic representation of a duck’s noise was usually "quek," probably pronounced [kwek] like ‘quake,’ which then became Modern English "quack" (Sayer 2009; Weimann 1975), we can also consider this set to depict an actual historical trajectory of sound change, within which the librarian’s details and spatial-temporal behaviors have been situated. Thus, like Shakespeare’s recording of his family members inside the narrative of political history, here the librarian is recorded inside Joyce’s representation of the narrative of linguistic history. However, we should note that the historical realism of [e] > [æ] in the [kwVk] context is not indicative of regular diachronic sound change patterns between Middle and Modern English—probably because of its non-arbitrary sound-symbolism as an animal noise, this form did not participate expectedly in the Great Vowel Shift. That "quake" to "quack" was an actual, but unexpected/anomalous shift may indicate Joyce’s problematization of arguments for historical regularity, such as Stephen’s fixation on a uniform biographical pattern in his reading of Shakespeare, which may present a facade of surgically-precise understanding akin to the n.2 sense of "quack."

B. Anti-Realist (A-Representational) Frameworks

I. Authorial Control

Another of the many vowel alternations in "Circe," the page-proximal, though not contiguous, h_(h) set shows variation between [a], [i] (or, possibly, [ɜ]), and [o]. Joyce from Bloom’s laughter with [a]—"Hah, hah, hah!" (U 15.4871)—to his attempted laughter with [i] / [ɜ]—"He he he!" (U 15.4873)—on to The Horse’s neigh, which may be considered a chuckle or chortle, with [o]—"Hohohohohohoh!Hohohohome!" (U 15.4879). In this case, the alternations mark Joyce’s variable transcription of essentially the same behavioral phenomenon, creating a suspicious illusion of semantic difference that does not seem to be substantiated by or correlated with the nuances in stage direction. Rather, he has inconsistently exercised his authorial willpower, incorporating multiple English orthographic conventions for denoting the vowels of laughter. We may thus consider this an experiment in, or demonstration of, the writer’s ability to arbitrarily manipulate language upon the page, in a cycle of purely aesthetic, poetic motivations and consequences that is unconcerned with representation.

II. Allusion

In the midst of overtly aural "Sirens," we witness one of Bloom’s highly sexualized, explicitly oral fantasies: "Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o’er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love" (U 11.705-09). Each of the cardinal vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are represented in this set, although not in traditional order. (For an additional framework that may be helpful in considering this reordering of the complete cardinal set, see the discussion of Dante’s figure of the linguistic bind in B.I. Authorial Control.) This aural/oral passage marks the transition of his attention from Molly (U 11.681-692), to the barmaids and Martha (U 11.711-6). Kept apart from the syntactic unit and the morphological -ing pattern of the rest of the vowel alternation set, and yet still clearly based on the t_p structure, we should read "tup" as the avoided, and thereby focused, element of the set. Further, we can affirm the membership of "tup" on the semantic basis that "all of these t-p ‘verbs’ [including "tup"] have in common the (archaic) meaning: to copulate as animals" (Gifford 303). The reverberations of "tup" become the axis of Bloom’s thought-transition, a hinge not merely of generally perverse sexual activity, but of infidelity specifically—hearkening from Shakespeare’s Othello, where Iago uses "tupping" to refer to the threat of extra-martial intercourse ( No Fear Shakespeare: Othello//, Act I, Scene I). We may consider Bloom’s failure to add the present continuous verbal ending a result of his inability to accept the synchronous going-on of Molly’s affair with Boylan, matched also by his inability to initiate a physical affair of his own with the willing Martha.

III. Narrative Structure

While they do not necessarily form a semantically meaningful or representational grouping, the b_t vowel alternation set serves to establish a rhythmic network across the text, helping to develop the webbed infrastructure of an otherwise somewhat stylistically disparate and emotionally inconsistent story. The following buzzwords appear in multiple scenarios throughout the work, with varying degrees of notoriety; these resurfacings are essentially the big and little ripples of a particular vowel token, which are themselves ripples of the common consonant structure: boot, but(t), bought, boat, bit, bet, bat, bait, (mastur)bate, beat, bite. For example, out of the 141 occurrences of "bit" in Ulysses, many serve as nonchalant measurements or qualifiers (such as U 3.64, 7.213, 12.1208, etc). Although most of these commonplace uses fly under our radar as standard vocabulary, some, like Molly’s retelling of Bloom "begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers" (U 18.284-5) are much more memorable, invoking important plot tropes—in this case, Bloom’s fetishization of underwear and digestive processes. Reverberations of this "bit" in particular, then, include reincarnations such as "Bit torn off" (referring to Deasy’s letter, U 7.519), as well as extensions such as the "titbit," which shifts in its reference from penis (U 3.477) to literary composition turned toilet paper (U 4.467-540), spanning the gamut of sexual digestion.

Although not explicated here, similar narratological undercurrent patterns are evident in the occurrences of the other words in this vowel alternation set as well, especially "boot," "bet," and "butt"/"but".