Mara, Miriam O’Kane. “James Joyce and the Politics of Food.” New Hibernia Review, vol. 13, no. 4, 2009, pp. 94-110, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/365718/pdf. Accessed November 21, 2016.

 

Related Topics:

Colonization

Gender

Consumption

 

Link to citation page: http://grinnellcollege.worldcat.org/title/james-joyce-and-the-politics-of-food/oclc/615182453&referer=brief_results

Link to Full Text: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/365718/pdf

 

Miriam O’Kane Mara illustrates the way in which gender, colonization, and identity inform an individual’s consumption throughout James Joyce’s career in her article, “James Joyce and the Politics of Food.” Mara argues that throughout Joyce’s work there are characters who “who restrict their food intake in particular social and political situations,” therefore creating “complicated connections between food, politics, and gender in Ireland,” (94). The article begins with the historical context of Irish food refusal. Mara states that food refusal is an Irish tradition used as a form of political speech. This tradition arose during the Irish famine in which Ireland suffered both extreme food shortages and an exportation of existing food into England. This made the famine into a symbol of English oppression which politicized Irish eating behavior and made food a stronger marker of identity.

Mara begins her textual analysis with an examination of the Christmas dinner table in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Gender informs the consumption habits of individuals at the table during moments of contention. During a conversation on nationalism and Catholicism, the male characters favor nationalism at the expense of faith which the female characters are largely opposed to. The women refrain from eating as a form of protest in order gain access to power and a voice. Mara includes a number of citation from “A Portrait” to provide examples of male consumption and the concurrent prevention of female consumption.

Next, Mara focuses on Stephen Dedalus in “Ulysses” to redraw the axis of gender, political orientation, and consumption. Stephen serves as a “feminized colonial subject” who attempts to build a new identity aligned with the mind and spirit rather than the body (100). He is contrasted with the “plump” Buck Mulligan who represents the “colonized body politic,” which Stephen wishes to escape (101). Stephen fears his own confusion about his gender identity and attempts to shutout outside forces. On such force that Mara views as paramount is food which Stephen thinks poses a threat to his identity. Mara claims that Stephen has discomfort in having a body which he counters by attempting to “deny and shrink corporeal presence,” (104). This results in a strict control of eating in which Stephen goes so far as to refute the ingestion of solid foods.

 

Related References:

Brivic, Sheldon. Joyce Between Freud and Jung. London: Kennikat Press, 1980.

Cheng, Vincent. Joyce, Race, and Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Dwyer, June. “Feast and Famine: James Joyce and the Politics of Food.” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas 17(1) (2001), pp 43.

Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

 

Segall, Jeffrey. “Between Marxism and Modernism, or How to Be a Revolutionist and Still Love ‘Ulysses.’”James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 4, 1988, pp. 421–444.

Related Topics:

Politics and Media

Union and Division

Thought and Action

Creation and Making

Link to citation page: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25484900

Link to full text: http://www.jstor.org.grinnell.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/25484900.pdf

Segall provides an in-depth historical exposition on the modernistic experimentation of Joyce’s writing and how it both aligned with and complicated the political philosophies and literary theories of his Marxist and leftist contemporaries. In a mostly chronological progression, Segall addresses the artistic premises of socialist thinkers like Leon Trotsky, Edmund Wilson, Phillip Rahv, and others, and analyzes their critiques of Joyce’s modernist approach to literature and whether or not it is ideologically opposed to Marxism as high art bourgeois extravagance or if it furthers the socialist cause by offering complex literary devices and intricate characters that scrutinize capitalistic institutions and disrupt standard writing conventions. Segall’s article is particularly insightful in regards to framing the ideological divide between the purely political ideologues of the Stalinist camp and the proponents of Trotsky’s literary theory which suggested that even artwork born out of bourgeoisie culture could enlighten and enrich the proletariat class despite not being explicitly revolutionary in approach, “I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan (U 16. 1099-1101).

According to Trotsky, “One cannot always go to the principles of Marxism in deciding whether to accept or reject a work of art” (qtd in Segall 425). This tolerance of Joyce’s modernism became the western leftist standard of critique as the 20^th Century progressed. Segall makes it clear that Joyce’s work, especially Ulysses, does not express outright political criticism, however, it also does not completely ignore issues of class, gender, nationality, and other injustices socialists would have been concerned with. While Ulysses is surely an advanced piece of fiction that is not explicitly leftist, Segall affirms, through explaining the Trotskyist tradition of accepting the educational capacities of meaningful art even from intellegentsia circles, that Joyce’s writings are integral works that can supplement the proletariat class.

Citations and Related Sources:

Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform (New York: Octagon Books, 1934), p. 37. 15 Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (New York: RusseU and RusseU, 1957), p. 225

Edmund Wilson, “James Joyce,” in Axel’s Castle (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931), p. 207.

Phillip Rahv, “Proletarian Literature: A Political Autopsy,” in Essays on Literature and Politics, pp. 299-300.

Baron, Scarlett. “Flaubert, Joyce: Vision, Photography, Cinema.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 54, no. 4, 2008, pp. 689-714, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/257623/pdf. Accessed 21 Nov 2016.

Noting the shortsightedness (so to speak) of previous analyses of Joyce’s work in comparison with cinema, Baron examines Ulysses as well as Joyce’s other texts through comparison with the work of Flaubert, noting a shared fixation on the technologies and techniques of vision that originates prior to the invention and popularization of film. Cautioning against a present-day tendency to assume the predominance of film as a technology of visualization, Baron begins by looking towards “modernism’s literary heritage in the field of visual representation”(690) in order to more fully understand the significance of “cinematographic” narration in Joyce’s work.

In the first of the article’s three sections, “Vision,” Baron begins by discussing the significance of vision in Flaubert’s writing. Using both Flaubert’s letters and quotes from his fiction, she identifies “an aspiration to observe surfaces intensely, so as to see what lies within: the essence of the object”(691). She then, meticulously citing various moments within Ulysses as well as Stephen Hero, argues that Joyce’s narratives contain a similar form of vision, “a vision that has taken as its object a specific, circumscribed object”(693). By locating the origins of this kind of myopic gaze in the earlier literature of Flaubert, Baron diverges from previous attempts to attribute this viewpoint to the “zoom-in” of film.

Baron switches tactics for the article’s second section, “Photography,” in which she provides evidence not just for Flaubert and Joyce’s preoccupations with the developing technology of the photograph but for both authors’ ultimate dismissal of its artistic merit. After citing Flaubert’s letters, in which he clearly articulates his contempt for the “mechanical process”(695) of the photograph compared to the vividness of the original, Baron points out that Joyce – whether or not he was aware of Flaubert’s views on photography – held a similar view that the photograph, however useful it might be, was “not a work of art”(695). Baron suggests that, for both of these authors (although especially Joyce), the issue in question was the stasis inherent in the photograph, using as evidence numerous moments in Ulysses in which the presence of photography seems to pause or interrupt the motion of a scene. References to the mutoscope – a kind of early motion picture device – as well as to screens in Ulysses function as a kind of history of the image that moves towards Baron’s final topic: cinema.

In this last and longest section of the article, Baron argues that many of the narrative techniques popularized by Flaubert (such as the fade-to-black, or the misdirecting image cut), due to their focus on the visual, lent themselves naturally to the techniques of early cinema. Rather than just representing an investment of the narration/camera in a focal character, however, Baron suggests this perspective can also create “estrangement of the narrator from his character”(704) important to both Flaubert and Joyce’s narrative styles. Therefore, Baron concludes that Joyce’s conscious and repeated use of cinematographic techniques in the narrative of Ulysses does not necessarily stem from the influence of cinema alone, but from a preoccupation with techniques of seeing – and with potential alienation from these techniques – that originates with his literary predecessors.

Forms

organ, organisation, organise, organiser, streetorgan, mouthorgan, organgrinder, organism, organic, organtoned, stillorgan

Related Terms

Flesh, Host

Explication

In Ulysses, the word organ takes on many different meanings, from musical, to scientific, to sexual, with the ambiguity between these meanings highlighting the blurring between the bodily and the artistic/spiritual in the novel. Most often, an organ in Ulysses is a musical instrument, typically associated with the church but also, as a mouthorgan or streetorgan, smaller devices whose notes play across the streets of Dublin. While often mentioned, these instruments are usually heard in passing – as in the “two shrill voices, a mouthorgan” that echo through the hallways of the telegraph – or reduced to the object of Bloom’s thoughts, as with the “Who has the organ here I wonder?(5.395) in “Lotus Eaters”. Indeed, Bloom thinks about church organs several times: “saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ“(6.609-610), the “organ in Gardiner street”(11.1197), “the pealing anthem of the organ“(13.282).

An organ is also, however, a specialized structure of flesh: the very first sentence about Leopold Bloom in Ulysses characterizes him as someone who “ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1). This is also the book’s first use of the word organ, here in its most fleshly sense as “a part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function”(OED). Far from musical or holy, this reference instead suggests Bloom’s perhaps unusual frankness about the physicality of the body. The dissonance between these two definitions of the word – the physical and the musical – suggests that any unity might lie in the more abstract meaning of an organ.

At various points in Ulysses, we see this definition of the organ abstracted to refer to other forms of arrangement and assembly. As each organ in a body serves its function, the Telegraph operates as a “GREAT DAILY ORGAN“(7.84) and The Irish Independent is “for the old woman of prince’s street […] the subsidized organ“(12.218-219), furthering a metaphor of a kind of body politic in which the periodical serves the function of a voicebox. Yet more abstractly, any kind of arranging can be referred to as organising, which in Ulysses most often refers to Boylan, the “organiser” of Molly’s concert tour.

This notion of Boylan as one who “organises” Molly highlights how the interplay of the divine/spiritual and the biological as two ways of structuring bodies within Ulysses also carries a sexual charge, wherein even the talk of organs and organizing in all its definitions discussed above hints at another, hidden organ: the penis. When Simon Dedalus, for example, declares that Ben Dollard will “burst the tympanum of her ear […] with an organ like yours”(11.536-537) he refers not only to Dollard’s baritone voice breaking eardrums but to a deflowering, as emphasized by Father Cowley’s added joke: “not to mention another membrane”(11.540). Similarly, Bloom’s reference to Boylan as Molly’s organiser hints at his awareness of the sexual infidelity occurring. The obsession in Ulysses with organs, therefore, is indicative of Bloom’s fixation not just on religion or guts, but also on the shame and anxieties about sexuality that are perhaps most visible in “Circe”.

Definitions and Examples

I. Organ, n. (OED n.1 2a) A musical instrument (usually large) consisting of a number of pipes, supplied with compressed air, sounded by keys, which on being pressed down let air into the pipes by opening valves.

“Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street”(5.394-397)

II. Organ, n. (OED n.1 3a) With distinguishing word. Any of various instruments resembling an organ in sound or construction. See also barrel organ n., hand organ n., mouth organ n. 1b.

“The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps”(7.425-426)

III. Organ, n. (OED n.1 5c)  A periodical which serves as the mouthpiece of a particular political party, cause, movement, etc.

“HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT”(7.84)

IV. Organ, n. (OED n.1 7a) A part of an animal or plant body that serves a particular physiological function

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”(4.1-2)

V. Organ, n. (OED n.1 8) The human organs of speech; the human voice.

“Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours”(11.536-537)

VI. Organ, n. (OED n.1 10)  The penis.

“The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis”(12.468-478)

VII. Organise, v. (OED v. 2d-e) To make arrangements or preparations for.

“—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent”(12.994-995)

VIII. Organisation, n. (OED n. 4a) An organized body of people with a particular purpose.

“How long since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to”(5.421-425)

IX. Organism, n. (OED n. 3a) An individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form.

“His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed”(14.650-654)

Related Topics

Bodies, Music, Medicine, Science, Politics & Media

Mass

 

Forms

 

Mass, Massboy, Masstime

 

Related Terms

 

Amass, Massed, Masses, Massa, Massage

 

Explication

 

Due to the Roman Catholic homogeneity of Ireland in Ulysses, mass stands as a particularly prevalent and loaded term. The very first usage of the word, “The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid” encapsulates Joyce’s perception of the island with unsettled tone, a place of bleak prospects and affirmed cultural stereotypes as connoted by the descriptor “green” (U 1. 107-108). Mass manifests in Ulysses as a term that intersects and intertwines itself with the Irish population, in both the traditional Catholic and Celtic sense.

While mass, in the context of Ireland, most obviously denotes a Catholic service, slight variants of the word, including massboy and masstime, convey how colloquially commonplace Catholic ritual is in Irish society and how it is inexorably connected to identities of its people, “Yes. In his way. Choirboy style. Mass was the boy. Massboy” (U.11 611-612). The routine importance of mass is an acknowledged frame of time that both structures Irish daily life and looms as an austere moral reminder. In Ulysses, mass, massed, and all its lexical modifications, do not merely convey a typical religious ceremony, but rather a sociopolitical force that drives the Joycean expression of fitful Irish life.

Additionally, it’s important to consider mass in the physical sense, a solid object. Bloom’s contemplation during Paddy Dignam’s funeral expresses this denotation of the word. During the funeral service, Bloom’s mind goes off on many tangents of thought, several of which deal with science, physicality, matter, or earth in general as displayed by Bloom’s morbid observation of grave dirt, “Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world” (U 6. 514-516).

A final permutation of mass that visibly stands out occurs in Episode 14. As “Oxen of the Sun” stylistically progresses through the many voices of the English literary tradition, eventually African-American diction is incorporated into the plot and employed to praise the late Paddy Dignam, “Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born” (U 14. 1555-1557). The related term of massa is especially intriguing for its natural usage would have been far removed from the Irish context. Additionally, utilizing massa to praise the deceased Paddy Dignam suggests how the term complicates conceptions of Irishness. By marginally adding to the noun presentation of mass and reapplying it with a separate voice, the word no longer imparts a connotation of Irish religious culture. The racialized mode of massa asserts that the recently passed away Paddy Dignam is no longer apart of Ireland.

 

Definitions and Examples

 

mass, n.1 (OED 1.a)

 

1. The Eucharist, esp. (in post-Reformation use) as understood and celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church.
2. The liturgical celebration of the Eucharist; the Eucharistic service. Now usually without article: e.g. after mass, to go to mass, etc.to say mass: (of a priest) to officiate at the celebration of the Eucharist. to hear mass: to attend mass as a member of the congregation.

 

“Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass?” (U 5. 421-422).

 

mass, v.2 (OED 1.b)

1.b. To collect, assemble, or come together in a mass or masses. Also with up.

“Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain.” (U 2. 367-369).

mass, n.2 (OED I, 1.a)

1. A body of matter, and related senses.

1.a. A dense aggregation of objects having the appearance of a single, continuous body. Also fig.

“Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow” (U 10. 261-262).

massa, n.1 (Merriam Webster)

1.a. Southern: Master

“the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of England’s greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor” (U 12. 1520-1526).

 

 

Related Topics

Religion/Catholicism

Blackness

Bodies

Union and Division

Bielawa, Michael J. “’U.p.’ at Bat: Baseball Symbolism in Ulysses’’Nausicaa’” NINE: A

            Journal of Baseball History and Culture 14.1 (2005): 143-50. Project Muse. Web.

 

Related Topics

 

Sports and Competition

Baseball

Numerology

 

In this article, Bielawa analyzes Ulysses’ thirteenth episode, “Nausicaa,” focusing on the striking prevalence of baseball references within the episode, in an effort to understand ways in which Joyce brings America’s pastime to his depiction of Dublin life. Bielawa begins the piece by drawing on an uncanny comparison between James Joyce and American ballplayer James Henry O’Rourke (ironically sharing a name with Ulysses character Larry O’Rourke), who was nicknamed “The Orator,” as a result of his Yale law degree and intelligent reputation. Similarly, Bielawa highlights 1904 as a major year for both James’, with Ulysses taking place on June 16, 1904, and O’Rourke’s nostalgic return to the Major Leagues on September 22, 1904, at the age of 54, eleven years after retiring (144). Bielawa suggests that this unique resemblance between the two, coupled with Joyce’s potential “dissatisfaction with 1904’s lack of a World Series,” drives the pervasive symbolism that he points out in the episode (146). In describing the numerous connections between baseball and “Nausicaa,” Joyce highlights the role of numerology and baseball imagery, using the two as key points in linking the American pastime and the episode.

 

In his numerological analysis of “Nausicaa,” Bielawa focuses on the number 9, noticing its prevalence in the episode in a variety of forms, finding his observations especially intriguing given the importance of nine in baseball, being the number of innings in a standard game. Referring to nine as, “The Mystic Number,” Bielawa points out nine’s appearances in various forms, for example, in the 54 total instances of derivatives of “nine,” (noting that 5+4=9), Baby Boardman’s age of eleven months and nine days, and the novel’s 18 total episodes (1+8=9), as evidence of this baseball connection (146).

 

While numerology presents some unique evidence for Joyce’s less visible baseball evidence, Bielawa zeroes in on baseball imagery as the pivotal aspect of his argument. From the “‘arcing fly balls,’” of the twins’ play, to Bloom’s use of a “stick” (which Bielawa points out is slang for “bat”), and especially the stare down between Gerty and Bloom from a distance Bielawa suggests is 60 feet and six inches, the traditional distance between the mound and home plate, these visual images Joyce paints contain an undeniable baseball tint (147). Coupled with the notion that time has stopped, like the untimed feature in baseball, due to Bloom’s broken watch, serves as a major confirmation of Bielawa’s previous claims. With this litany of connections in mind, Bielawa suggests readers look towards the rest of the novel with “Nausicaa’s” baseball symbolism in mind, especially as Bloom seeks to reach home, just like every batter that steps up to the plate.

Somer, John. “The Self-Reflexive Narrator in the Initial Style of Joyce’s “Ulysses”” James Joyce Quarterly 31.2 (1994): 65-76.

In this article, Somer guides readers through an analysis of three figures central to the narrative structure of Ulysses: the author, the narrator, and “the arranger.” In distinguishing between them, Somer explains that, “while a narrator may appeal to a reader’s mental ear, the arranger frequently appeals to a reader’s physical eye” (69). The arranger is responsible for the physical representation of text on the page, and, specifically in the context of Ulysses, instigates a “self-reflexive” engagement with the text that “forces readers to acknowledge that they are reading” (70). Somer explains that, over the course of Ulysses, the arranger and the narrator are at odds with each other – free indirect discourse, a mimetic narrative form that places readers “in direct contact with reality” (73), is often punctuated by moments where the arranger makes the reader critically aware of the novel’s textuality (when Bloom’s cat utters the orally improbable “Mkgnao” [U 4.16], for example). Somer goes on to cite instances of opaque language in “Calypso” and a divided narrative voice in “Hades” as further evidence of the arranger’s gradually increasing dominance over the more traditional, initial narrative structure of Ulysses. This battle between the narrator and the arranger persists for the duration of the novel until ultimately, Somer argues, the arranger reins victorious in “Sirens” and demonstrates the epitome of what has been a “growing mastery of style” (76).

Mourning

Forms

[in] mourning, mourns, mourners, mournful, Mourne, mournfully, morning

Related Terms

grief, grieving, black, sorrow, clad, day, early, wake

Explication

The word “mourning” gains prominence beginning in episode six with the narration of Patty Dignam’s funeral, and the word is predominantly used to describe individuals who are “in mourning,” wearing the black attire typically associated with funerals in the Western tradition. After Dignam’s funeral, for example, his son walks along the street and wonders, “do they [the schoolboys] notice I’m in mourning” (U. 10. 1159). In this context, the word connotes an external representation of grief that may or may not match up with internal feelings. Bloom, for example, dresses in black to give the appearance of mourning Dignam’s death, but his wandering thoughts during the funeral indicate that he may not actually be grieving.

Joyce also employs the word as a noun: “the mourners knelt here and there in prayingdesks” (U. 6. 322) at Patty Dignam’s funeral, and “the mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves” (U. 6. 800) at his burial. In these instances, we can infer that the “mourners” are also “in mourning,” wearing black as a physical embodiment of their inner grief. The noun derivative does not allow for individuals to exist outside of their grieving state.

In looking at the homophone “morning” and its connection to “mourning,” it is notable that Bloom dons his black clothing at the beginning of the day, in the “morning”, to attend Dignam’s funeral. Given that Ulysses takes place over the course of only one day, it is implied that Bloom is “in mourning” for the duration of the novel; although worn situationally for Dignam, Bloom’s black attire can be seen as a persistent reminder of his unmitigated grief regarding the death of his son, Rudy.

“Morning” appears 121 times in Ulysses, primarily as a temporal marking to either define the present moment (Stephen says, “Good morning, sir” [U. 2. 426], for example), refer back to it once it has past (in later episodes, it is common to see the phrase “this morning”), or to refer to the coming morning. As Molly says in Penelope, “Ill get up early in the morning” (U. 18. 1498), highlighting the fact that, in contrast to the state of being “in mourning,” which has the potential to be perpetual and without break, “morning” itself is part of a cycle, beginning again each day.

Molly gives us further perspective on Bloom’s mourning when she describes her own “mourning” for Rudy as past tense and unnecessary (“11 years ago … what was the good of going into mourning” [U. 18. 1306]) and then implies that Bloom is overly devoted to the process of grieving (“hed go into mourning for the cat” [U. 18. 1306]). In a subsequent passage that highlights a perhaps fundamental difference between Molly and Bloom, Molly fantasizes about “a nice semitransparent morning gown” (U. 18. 1496) that stands in stark opposition to the black “mourning” apparel Bloom had put on that very morning. Molly’s acknowledgement of both “in mourning” and “morning” itself as non-permanent states from which individuals can come and go hints that perhaps Bloom’s perpetual state of mourning is unnatural, contrary to the Natural Order that facilitates a constant transition between various states of being.

Definitions and Examples

Mourning

1. , Anxiety, sorrow, etc. The action of feeling or expressing sorrow, grief, or regret; sorrowing, lamentation; an instance of this.

 

1. in mourning: sorrowing or grieving for the death of a person, esp. in the period of the conventional or ceremonial manifestation of sorrow. Also Wearing clothes or covered with the draperies customarily indicative of bereavement. Cf. sense.
   6. “Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning” (6. 40)

 

• mourning coach  (a) a coach of black colour used by a person during the whole period of his or her mourning (now hist.);  (b) a closed carriage, usually black, used to convey mourners on the occasion of a funeral;  †(c) a coach for conveying a corpse; a hearse (obs.).
  6. “A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married” (6. 322)

 

1. n., a person who mourns, laments, or grieves; one who mourns the death of a friend or relation; a person who attends a funeral out of respect or affection for the deceased. Also fig.
   6. “The mourners knelt here and there in prayingdesks” (6. 584).

Morning

1. , Originally: the time of the approach or beginning of ‘morn’; the period around sunrise. In later use usually: the early part of the day, esp. from sunrise until noon or lunchtime.
   1. “A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air” (1. 2-3)

 

1. this morning: the morning of today
   8. “Funeral was this morning” (8. 220)

 

• , designating clothing intended to be worn in the morning or daytime
  18. “a nice semitransparent morning gown” (18. 1496)

 

Related Topics

Funerals

Clothing

Day vs. Night

Game

 

Forms: game, games, gamey, gamehog(s), gamekeeper, gaming

 

Related Terms: 

 

Beat

Compete

Win

Lose

Gay

Gamble

 

Explication

 

Throughout Ulysses, the most common usage of game appears in a competitive sense, where the word represents some back and forth  in a jocular manner, connecting with themes of competition and sports in the novel, but also notions of masculinity, femininity, and sexualities. While game is presented in overt images of young boys playing field hockey (U.2.313), the term is also more broadly connected to competition, such as the fierce gambling on the Gold Cup and Bloom’s intensity as he seeks to defeat Boylan for Molly’s love and attention. The lexical item comes up in the bar among men discussing the local decision by police “forbidding Irish games in the park” (U.12.679). Within the e pub, games and sports serve as a major topic of conversation, specifically in relation to the citizen’s Gaelic sports revival, but also in each character’s attempts to prove and assert their masculinity to their male peers.

 

The other primary use for “game” is as an adjective, usually in reference to someone describing themselves or being described as prepared, ready, or spirited. The term appears in its adjective form in reference to horses as “And a game filly she is” (U. 10. 511) to highlight the high level of attention the Gold Cup race has received. Here, “game” carries a youthfulness and an energy that implies an ability to be competitive (especially in the horse racing world) or a certain level of power or ability that is clear in a person’s character. Later on in “Circe,” in a heated confrontation between Bloom and Bella, after Bloom critiques Bella’s physical features, she responds with “You’re not game in fact,” suggesting a level of physical inadequacy on Bloom’s end as well (U.15.3489). In this more open-ended context, game can refer to Bloom’s sexual and/or physical shortcomings, hinting at him not being up to a certain standard of beauty or sexual performance, therefore being less masculine and inferior.

 

Ulysses has a few additional variations of game, including gamehog (U.12.1348) and gamekeeper (U.15.648), which align with the animal-related definition of the term that appears in “game of cygnets,” when referring to a group of swans (U.9.160). While gamekeeper is used to manage and protect the animals from being hunted compared to the animal of a gamehog, these three instances highlight a use for game that expands outside of notions of sports and competition.

 

Across these various definitions and uses for game, a trend that Joyce establishes is the animalistic nature of competition, as well, connecting the word with historically masculine practices such as sports and hunting. However, Joyce employs the term in a range of contexts and forms that masks this underlying theme of masculinity within the realm of competition and sports in Ulysses.

 

 

 

Definitions and Examples:

 

1. Game, n. (OED n. 2) An activity which provides amusement or fun.

 

“They were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading” (U. 15.444)

 

7. Game, n. (OED n. 7.a) An activity, undertaking, scheme, state of affairs, etc., likened to a game in its manner of proceeding.

 

“I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game” (U.15. 975).

 

III. Game, adj. (OED adj. 2). Having the necessary spirit or will for a specified challenge, adventure, novel experience, etc.; ready and willing.

 

“And a game filly she is” (U.10. 511)

 

“When the bell went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime” (U.12. 975)

• Also applied to actions, attributes, etc. (OED 1)

 

1. Game, n. (OED n. 18). A flock of swans, originally one kept to be hunted for pleasure. Formerly also: any flock or herd of animals or birds maintained for this purpose

 

“But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cynets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thought” (U.9.160)

 

Related Topics

Competition, Sports, Gender, Sexuality

Forms

Geld, Gelded, Gelding

Explication

Gelding and the state of being Gelded relates to a pervasive male anxiety that has cultural and political connotations, but especially relates to the character of Leopold Bloom, his status as a cuckold, his fruitless relationships with women, and his strange, uneasy presence in male environments. Odysseus, Bloom’s Homeric analogue, is defined by his violent phallic and penetrative power, evidenced by such actions as the blinding of Polyphemus with a stake, Odysseus’ rape of Circe and the destruction of her wand, and, almost comically, Odysseus’ signature feat of shooting an arrow through the heads of a dozen axes. While attempting to map Homer’s Odyssey directly onto Ulysses may not be a universally productive strategy, the dissonance in this aspect of Bloom’s relationship to Odysseus is pointed. Bloom may be, in some ways, reductively figured as a gelded Odysseus.

Of particular interest are the animalistic connotations of the word; it refers with equal ease to male humans and male animals, blurring the boundary between the two. This aspect of gelding becomes particularly relevant in Circe, where, in a hallucinatory sequence, Blazes Boylan, entering Bloom’s home for his rendezvous with Molly, “hangs his hat smartly on a peg of  Bloom’s antlered head.” (15.3763-3764) Bloom, bearing the cuckold’s antlers, assists in his wife’s adultery. While the antlers mark him as cuckold, they also introduce an animalistic quality to his humiliation and abasement. Moreover, Circe sees Bloom dominated by Bella/Bello Cohen, and in the course of this Bloom is referred to by feminine pronouns. In the midst of all of this, Bloom submissively refers to Bella/Bello as “Master! Mistress! Mantamer!” (15.3062) Thus, the act of gelding, advocated for use upon Bloom by Mrs Bellingham earlier in the episode, and its figurative echos of humiliation and domination, blurs and perhaps collapses the boundaries between man and animal, as well as male and female identities.

A final aspect of geld that never occurs explicitly in Ulysses, but lurks pertinently in the background is that of geld as gold, as a historical reference to money, especially taxes, in an Anglo-Saxon context. The issue of money haunts Bloom and others’ perception of him; a key incident in Episode XII involves bar patrons speculating that Bloom has won a significant sum in the Gold Cup race. This exchange circles back to the fears of castration induced by the word geld: the Gold Cup is won not by the phallic stallion, Sceptre, but a filly, Throwaway, who is aligned in several places with Bloom himself.

Definitions and Examples

I. Gelded, adj. (OED 1.a) Of a person or animal: Castrated.

“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.” (Ulysses 3.116-119)

II. Geld, v. (OED 1.a) To deprive (a male) of generative power or virility, to castrate or emasculate.

“MRS BELLINGHAM: (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.” (Ulysses 15.1112-1115 )

III. Gelding, n. (OED 2) A gelded or castrated animal, especially a horse.

“When countrybound velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).” (Ulysses 17.1575-1578)

IV. Geld, n. (OED a) A tax paid to the crown by English landholders before the Conquest, and continued under the Norman kings.