“Gold” struck me at first because of its frequent use as both a noun and an adjective, and the way those usages seemed to work off one another. As a noun, it’s synonymous with money and wealth; i.e., Dedalus goes to Deasy’s “strongroom for the gold” (29), where he’s lectured (very pompously) on the value of saving money. Likewise it’s used for lyrical, almost pastoral descriptions of the sea and surroundings: the “gold light on the sea” complements the “slender trees” and “lemon houses” Dedalus walks by (42); he thinks of “a girl with gold hair on the wind” (61), “tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry” (42), and “Danevikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold” (45). In each mention, gold’s associated with opulence—the decadence of gold teeth and pastry—or loot, like Deasy’s strongroom or the Danevikings’ plunder. Death seems to float around some of these allusions (gold teeth are false, for example) in an indirect and very creepy way. “It’s all the same,” Bloom thinks on the way to the funeral. “Palbearers, gold reins…pomp of death” (100). The use of the word ‘gold’ seems to gild the concept of death and decay (I’m comparing the descriptions with ‘gold’ to the descriptions with ‘green’, which are a whole lot less lyrical). But the effect is one that heightens rather than eases the narrative’s descriptions of death. “Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey, then black…Day, then the night,” thinks Bloom (69). Even the idealized “greengoldenly lagoons” Dedalus notices on his walk are therefore indicative of the idealization of decay and sickness that pervades his conception of Ireland.

The word I would like to propose working with for the lexicon is “tongue”. The word appears a total of 54 times in the text, only five of which we have encountered thus far. At this point the word has been used in reference to the body part itself, even when it is used in a figurative sense, such as when Mulligan exclaims how “a sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus.”  In this instance, which is notably the first occurrence of the word in the novel, the tongue is not only associated with speech, but also with honesty and truth. Tongues next appear in the opening of episode two, after the children are dismissed from class and Stephen hears the “clamour of their boots and tongues” that fills the halls. This usage emphasizes a point made in our discussion on Tuesday about how Joyce will often create dissonance by describing organs/limbs etc. as though they are acting and perceiving independently from the person whose body they are part.

Though I considered various other terms (horn, drawn, awful, waste) I have chosen to nominate “tongue” because of the ways in which it potentially relates to my obsession of native vs. foreign. Tongue can also mean language, one of the primary means through which native and foreign is distinguished generally, and within Ulysses in particular. Though it has not yet been used in this way, it will be later in the text.

“Geld” is an extremely interesting word in the context of Ulysses, as it brings together two pertinent domains, castration and, in a Dutch or Germanic context, money. The word first appears in episode 3: “A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat. ” Stephen’s mind produces a menacing image of castrated, animalistic priests, legible in light of his difficulties with religion. Bloom, on the other hand, observes in Episode 5 that the horses he has been admiring are gelding, going on to add, ” Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look.” This is a very suggestive passage in light of the ways that Bloom is feminized and figuratively castrated, and suggests that the word will have different connotations for the two characters.

I would like to consider a lexicon entry on the uses of the word “organ” in Ulysses.  Perhaps the most memorable use of the term within the first six episode is in Bloom’s introductory sentence: the first thing we know of him is that he “ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1-2). What draws me to this term, however, is not just the memorable appetite implied by this usage – which is in the sense the OED describes as “a part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function” – but the flexibility of the term.

Bloom may be an eater of organs, but he also comes to church and asks himself, “Who has the organ here I wonder?”(5.395) The same word can be a specialized body part or a holy instrument, but the mass itself also possesses “wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork”(5.424) just a few lines later. Episode six, however, returns us to the organ’s more mundane meanings when the funeral carriage passes “a streetorgan” playing “a rollicking rattling song of the halls”(6.6.372-3).

Although these are, as far as I can tell, the only uses of the word so far in Ulysses, a quick search of the (non-Gabler) HTML text shows that it occurs a total of 45 times. Certainly, the word has plenty more meanings to consider: a newspaper can be the organ of a political cause, someone’s voice could – in Joyce’s time, at least – be referred to as their organ, and so on – the OED lists ten definitions, many with sub-definitions of their own. I suspect from what I know of Joyce that it would be an oversight not to consider, both in considering the word’s recurrence thus far and in awaiting its future appearances, OED definition #10: a euphemism for the penis.

Speaking of which, I first considered selecting the word cock(le) from the list of suggestions provided – it seemed an easy choice given Joyce’s penchant for innuendo, as well as my “sexualities” obsession – but quickly found that I was simply more interested in the other options I thought of. The other word I considered – am still considering, really, depending on how the rest of the book goes – is “grave”. Given that its two most prominent definitions (as a noun, for a place of burial, and as an adjective, meaning serious or severe) both appear prominently in Ulysses, and given the obsession with death so far, it seemed a natural choice. The only reason I chose “organ” was that the variety of its definitions compelled me just a little more – I’ll just have to see where I can go with it.

For my lexicon entry, I find myself drawn to the word ‘bar’. One of the obvious reasons I think the word is important is because of the apparent omnipresence of alcohol and mentions of drinking. Additionally, since there are many synonyms for bar (e.g. pub, tavern) I think it would be interesting to examine when bar is used in place of those, and why. Beyond those synonyms, bar can also be used in a musical context, to refer to a measure of music or a brief excerpt of a song.

I find that bar as a prefix is used relatively frequently, common in the word ‘barmaid.’ The first mention of a bar, though, is at the beginning of episode three, where Uncle Richie “drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di sortita.” This use of bar opens up analysis of the musical themes of the novel in addition to the opportunity for examining the scenes that take place in bars in the context of alcohol use.

Before looking into bar, I considered the word bond, or bondage, primarily because those words would pair well with my obsession with themes of blackness and slavery. Despite their direct relation to my obsession, I chose not to focus on these words so as to keep examining other topics that I find very interesting, that being the topic of the frequency of alcohol use as well as the use of music and poetry allusions in the text.

Given that both Stephen and Bloom grapple with loss in the first two sections of Ulysses (Stephen the death of his mother, Bloom the suicide of his father and the death of his infant son), I am proposing “mourning” as a new lexicon entry along with its homophone “morning.”

After a quick search of the online text of Ulysses, I see that “mourning” appears 26 times, and alternative derivatives (“mourn,” “mourned,” etc.) appear 44 times. The word gains prominence beginning in episode six with the narration of Patty Dignam’s funeral, and I notice that the word is subsequently used to describe individuals “in mourning” as well as objects typically associated with mourning, like a “mourning carriage” and a “mourning hat.” Given the pervasive presence of loss that we’ve already seen in Ulysses, and the contrast that exists between appearing mournful and actually mourning (Bloom dresses in black to give the appearance of mourning Dignam’s death, but we speculated in class that his thoughts during the funeral indicate that he may not actually be grieving), I think it would be useful to track this term’s presence for the rest of the novel and see how it helps clarify Bloom and Stephen’s relationships with loss.

Since my obsession is narration and storytelling, I have also been keeping track of how time is marked throughout the novel. “Morning,” a classic indicator of a new day, appears much more frequently than “mourning,” at 121 times. The novel begins in the “morning,” with Buck Mulligan standing in the “mild morning air.” While I’m not sure yet if there is a clear correlation between “mourning” and “morning,” it certainly seems that a lot of Ulysses’ action takes place in the morning, and I am curious if there is any connection between the two.

Before settling on “mourning” and “morning,” I was also interested in “body” because it has so many potential meanings (human body, body of water, body of Christ). I’m hoping to be able to look more into this word later on as we read more about religion and Bloom’s perceptions of his own body.

dogsbody: someone who does boring, menial tasks. According to a word history, this term was not frequently used until around 1910. This British slang term seemed to have originated in the Royal Navy, and referred to a junior officer responsible for unimportant tasks.

In Ulysses, the term only occurs five times, and only four in the reading we’ve done so far. The first time it is used condescendingly by Buck to describe Stephen, and the second occurs almost immediately after, when Stephen internalizes the term and refers to himself as a dogsbody. The final two instances occur in episode three as Stephen watches a dog sniff the carcass of another dog. Interestingly in this instance, the term is actually used to describe the body of the dead dog, and follows the terms “dogskull” and “dogsniff”. Thus in the first two instances, it is used in the denotative definition, but in the last two, it used like many of Joyce’s other combined words and literally means the body of a dog.

Buck uses this term to call attention to Stephen’s need of appropriate clothing and secondhand clothes, which seems to be an incorrect use of the word. A few passages later, Stephen looks in a mirror and seems slightly repulsed at his face, thinking “Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin” (Joyce 3). He seems to internalize Buck’s insult, but again does not use the term in its dictionary definition. In Ulysses, “dogsbody” seems to be an insulting term for someone who appears to be of a lower class, a status which is marked by lack of fancy clothing and an association with pests.

I believe that the word, cross, could be a useful lexicon word to unpack for Ulysses. Cross has three different meanings and is a prime word for the use of double entendres. Firstly, cross can mean the intersection of lines, often connoting the religious symbol. It can simultaneously mean angry or annoyed. The last definition refers to the extension or the movement beyond a demarcated space. The theme of religion throughout Ulysses makes Cross all the more important. We have seen Buck Mulligan cross his razor and his mirror; an obvious allusion to the religious cross. There has also been significant discussion of cross-dressing, which employs the latter definition of the word. Men and women extend their clothing (sometimes their identity) beyond the space they are expected to occupy. I suspect that this word may be used by Joyce to obscure or challenge the conception of religion in Ulysses.

I also considered core/corpse/corps and bottom as potential words. These are both more bodily in nature which leads me to think that Joyce might use these sorts of words to elicit double meanings in reference to the body. Bottom means both the butt and the lowest which could be conceivably used interchangeably while still invoking meaningful ambiguity. Corpse refers to the dead body. This definition can be relational to the definition of corps which means a branch of the armed services which leads one to think of death. Core refers to the center or most important part of something, which one could decipher as the body. It will be entertaining to see how Joyce employs semantic complexity and double entendres throughout Ulysses.

When I searched the text of Ulysses for the word crown I tried to tally its usage by its different definitions. About halfway through I gave up because of the incredible variety of the term’s usage. Crown and its variants (crowns, crowned, crowning) occur 48 times in the text: 39 times as a noun, seven times as an adjective, and twice as a verb. Within the category of ‘noun’ I also tallied the following subcategories: 12 times as currency, 4 times as a brand (Crown Derby china), and 6 times as an entity (“the Crown.”)

I had expected that most of the uses of the word would be in reference to currency, but exactly one fourth of them were. The other uses of crown range from the crown of foam on a glass of beer to the “rawskinned crown” of a shoe sole to the Northern Crown constellation. (Most of the 18 remaining noun usages all represent slightly different usages of the word.)

I thought that crown cropped up unusually often in Ulysses, but I wanted to be sure so I checked some other famous novels of the 1920s for usage of the word. I did a text search for crown in The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, and Mrs. Dalloway – and found that the word is not used a single time in any of the three texts. If I end up looking further into this term, I will definitely check more texts (and try to find some that are comparable to Ulysses in terms of length) but I think its glaring absence in the work of three of Joyce’s most well known contemporaries is proof enough that things worth noting are happening with crown. The sheer variety and frequency with which the term is used has piqued my interest and I look forward to digging deeper into the contexts it appears in.

P.S. I didn’t find any uses of this definition of crown during my cursory survey, but it’s still interesting to note that during childbirth, crowning describes the moment when an infant’s head appears in the birth canal.

Considering my obsession relates to religion, particularly Catholicism, I’m very interested in investigating Joyce’s utilization of “cross.” Obviously, this word has major resonance with Catholicism due to the Crucifixion of Christ being a paramount theological moment. In fact, the Catholic Church considers the Crucifixion and subsequent Resurrection the two most important moments in Christianity. However, in Ulysses, the eminence of the Cross seems complicated. For example, Bloom observes the mass he notices letters on the priest’s back, “I.N.R.I? No” (5, 372). However, his sight is wrong and he casually disregards the phrase “King of the Jews” that was carved over Jesus’ head as he was crucified, words that hold high significance in the Catholic tradition, words that should not easily be mixed up.

I’m also intrigued by the usage of “cross” as a verb. Mulligan’s cutting accusation against Dedalus stands as a particularly glaring application of this, “You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don’t whinge like some hired mute” (1, 212-213). As I look into my obsession, the acts, performances, and rituals, of Catholicism stand out in Joyce’s writing. Joyce manipulates words related to these religious practices in very compelling and inciting ways. Perhaps “crossing” and/or the physical action of the Sign of the Cross will continue to meaningfully impact the forthcoming episodes.

The words “crown” and “mass” also stood out as pertinent due to their Christian connotations. The allusion to I.N.R.I and Bloom’s contemplation during the Catholic service convey that those two words do purposely intersect with the plot. However, unlike “cross,” they don’t have the verb usage that I find so insistently promising in its subtle, yet dramatic utilization.