Lawrence, Karen R. “BEGGARING DESCRIPTION’: POLITICS AND STYLE IN JOYCE’S EUMAEUS.'” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2nd ed., vol. 38, John Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. 355-76.

muse.jhu.edu.grinnell.idm.oclc.org/article/244009/pdf.

Lawrence argues that Joyce offers a comprehensive analysis of the complexities of the socioeconomic stratification present in turn of the century Ireland through his usage of political and economic signifiers and comedic literary devices throughout “Eumaeus”. Through an in-depth analysis of dialogue from Bloom and Stephen Lawrence asserts the presence of a “bourgeois common sense” (364) in the tone of their language, despite their “outsider” status; Bloom’s Jewish roots situate him as a cultural outsider and Stephen’s trade as an artist (poet) is not held in high esteem. Lawrence places their outsider status in the context of Ireland as a whole explaining that Britain’s colonization of Ireland situated all of Ireland’s citizens as “beggars” and undermined the existence of a class system in Irish society. She writes: “Rather than be- ing merely a symptom of the isolated bourgeois consciousness, the writing in “Eumaeus” is a kind of diagnosis of the tension of this consciousness in its particular Irish colonial formation.” (358).

Lawrence identifies a fundamental contradiction that runs throughout “Eumaeus,” that is conveyed through the manner in which Bloom and Stephen conceptualize and discuss social and economic status. The contradiction is in the perceived it is through the language in which these contradictions are expressed and the interactions Bloom and Stephen have with other Irish peoples that Joyce lays out “an anatomy of socioeconomic identifications and divisions” (356) for Ireland’s social climate. While they did exist, class divisions between the Irish during this time were minimal and not clearly defined and the Irish were a marginalized community as a whole under British rule. Lawrence uses this distinction to note the “absurdity” of the class system that exists in Irish society.

Lawrence points out the way idioms, clichés, and puns inform and alter the way various words are defined; often adding a political or economic layer to the definition. The strongest aspect of Lawrence’s argument can be found in her unpacking the utility of these comedic literary devices. Lawrence purports that by shrouding darker themes like classism and marginalization in humor the true absurdity of their existence in this particular setting is amplified in a way that allows for what she calls the “materialization of the bottom”: “By a comic process of literalization in the language, bourgeois abstrac- tions for the working classes are demystified and the “bottom” of the social body materializes.” (370).

References

Law, Jules David, Morris Beja, and Shari Benstock. “Simulation, Pluralism, and the Politics of Everyday Life.” Coping With Joyce: Essays from the Copenhagen Symposium. Ohio State UP, 1989.

Obsessions & themes

Native & foreign, performance, the unspoken

Forms: Tongue(s), tongued

Related terms: Lap, lick, language

Explication

The tongue is represented within Ulysees as a mechanism that relates meaning, though that meaning varies widely over the course of the text, depending on the context wherein occurrences of ‘tongue’ occur. While there are references to ‘tongue’ wherein the different definitions of the word overlap, complicating and expanding the meaning of the moment that contextualizes it, it does not seem that these meanings are gradually consolidated over the course of the text. Considering the prominence of ‘tongue’ in certain key moments and images within the text, there are inevitably instances wherein the reader’s interpretation of the ‘tongue’ in a respective context will consider one that occurred earlier in the text, perhaps even in a different chapter. In certain instances, there is a strong case to be made that Joyce intentionally widens the reader’s lens through the usage; for the most part however, the tongues of Ulysses do not have a life beyond the specific moments wherein the tongue is invoked.

Tongue is used primarily within the text as a noun, primary in a figurative sense, but also literally, and the majority of the time in the singular, though also often in the plural. Despite that the tongue in most of the context wherein it appears is implicated in some form of action, which vary widely in the text, it is used only once as a verb. When used figuratively, the tongue generally refers to and/or illustrates some form of verbal communication, in many instances to an entire language (Gaelic most frequently, but also Latin, Greek, British English and Spanish), but more frequently to emphasize more specific, and often highly nuanced, forms and functions of speech and communication, human and animal alike. The tongue often serves to challenge the distinction we make between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom, at times to suggest the sentience and intelligence of animals, but more often to accentuate the animalistic, carnal, and brutish nature of specific characters, but also man in general.

Descriptions of various animals (dogs in particular, especially throughout Ep. 15) often refer specifically to the tongue. Tongues of animals are often described as “hanging” or “lolling” out of their mouths, and their degree of protrusion seems to directly correspond to how the speaker perceives and/or means to convey them; the longer the tongue, the more beastly the animal. How these animals are perceived—in other words, the degree of distance that the speaker asserts between themselves and the animal—generally serves as an effective predictor of the nature of the speaker. For instance, when the citizen remarks on a dog’s “tongue hanging out of him a yard long,” before calling him a “hungry bloodly mongrel,” is is his own brutishness that is emphasized (U12.498). Through these various descriptions of animal tongues, Joyce establishes the tongue as an expression of the carnal.

Where the tongue appears in reference to people rather than animals, it is rarely used in a purely literal, anatomical sense but rather to express various functions of their speech or its absence, which contributes further characterization and illuminates interior thoughts and emotions. The dynamics of power and authority within various contexts are relayed through the tongue where it is used in this manner; as far as the tongue is described as an autonomous entity, the reader is impelled to consider the nature of the relationship between character and that which is conveyed through language, and to attempt to locate the truth upon this continuum.

Finally, tongue is used as a synonym for language, Gaelic in particular. An alignment with this tongue within the texts indicates a nationalist political affiliation . It remains uncertain what effect the revival of the “old tongue” that is sought would have, as well as whether that revival is even possible. The tongue in this usage is therefore a thing invested with both the potential to unite across various existing divides, as well as to further distinguish and secure distinction; the power of the tongue in this sense rests upon limiting access to it. Yet tongue is often used to refer to a universal language, such as when Stephen ironically recommends gesture “universal language, the gift of tongues,” rather than a spoken language (U15.104). Overall, considering the sum of the various instances where it is used, the degree to which the tongue bridges various forms of distance versus maintaining or even increasing it, varies widely through Circe, and ultimately remains unclear.

Definitions & Examples

1. Tongue, n. (I) The bodily member.

·      “his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel” (U 12.498).

·      “Why are their tongues so rough?” (U 4.46).

·      “Mr. Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth smooth” (U 8.1029-30).

II. Tongue, n. (II) In reference to speech. Fig.  

·      “The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said” (U 1.565).

·      “How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek” (U 10.670).

·      “She was about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue” (U 13.121-22).

·      “the gift of tongues” (U 15.104).

(8.a) The speech or language of a people or race; also, that of a particular class or locality, a dialect.

·      “revival of the Irish tongue” (U 7.795).

·      “O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue” (U 9.313).

·      “the cause of our old tongue” (U 12.907-08).

III. Tongue, v. (OED 4.a) To touch with the tongue; also, to lick up. 

“Hot I tongued her” (U8.916).

As it seems others have experienced, it has been difficult to draw overarching conclusions from the consolidation of my obsession of native and foreign regarding its status or role within Ulysses as a whole. While reading the novel, I have considered my obsession according to numerous possible interpretations of the definition of the terms ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ and the corresponding nature of the distinction between them. These interpretations have ranged anywhere from literal and apparent, as in instances where the opposition between Irish nationalism and British imperialism/occupation structures the action, to interpretations more figurative and obscure, according to which I have focused on the success and failure of bodies in either preserving or conflating that distinction, as well as the motivation for either. Though this liberal and flexible study of native and foreign over the course of the text has been rewarding, it has also made consolidation a challenge.

Native and foreign function within the text as a primary means of identification and definition. In certain contexts/instances they work collaboratively to perform this function, and in others, where they manifest as starkly opposed and fundamentally incompatible, they are defined against one another. The distinction/opposition is often of immediate and central pertinence within the action, particularly in what have been characterized as the “social” episodes. While native and foreign do not shape the narrative as directly within the more introverted episodes, the representation of native and foreign elements, and the navigation of the distinction/opposition between them remain critical to the characterization that occurs within them. Joyce thereby represents the consequences of the centrality of this distinction/opposition at the intimate, interior, individual level, as well as on a broader, more collective scale.

In the more social scenes, the distinction/opposition between native and foreign is implicated both in the formation of bonds and the discernment and acceptation of difference. Within these scenes, strength and quality of character is both asserted and judged in terms that distinctively refer to this distinction/opposition. The hierarchies configured within the respective social contexts of the novel to a major degree stem from this system of identification. Alignment with the ‘native’ reliably corresponds to superior status and greater interconnectivity, while association with the ‘foreign’ produces the inverse. For the distinction/opposition to authoritatively function to configure social status and resulting condition relies on the reinforcement of the notion that these categories are inherent and fixed. In instances where explanation according to these categories is contradicted, it is not the validity of strict distinction/opposition that is questioned, but rather the nature and inherent worth of the hybrid identities which are anomalies to the rule.

Native and foreign are elements that are implicated within both Bloom and Stephen’s characterization, as well as their respective and relational evolution over the course of the text. Through them, Joyce asserts native and foreign as inevitably subject and inclined to change, thereby demonstrating the precariousness of identities founded on the notion of an essence that permanently fixes this distinction/opposition. Though Joyce reveals the falseness of the notion of an inherent distinction/opposition between native and foreign from both sides, the fiction of the native functions differently from that of the foreign. In developing my short paper, I would like to focus more specifically on the relationship between authority/power and this distinction/opposition.

I found that the dives into subconscious, within Circe enabled new ways to conceive of native and foreign and their implication and interaction. Though it has been clearly established by this point the degree to which Bloom has been paralyzed by his lack of definition according to this divide, and the abuse that he endures because of it, this is the first time that we are shown the degree to which Bloom, because of the trauma he has experienced, must now navigate that divide within his own mind. At least in the first part of Circe, we see from the degree and frequency with which he is rejected and/or treated as alien, monstrous, magical etc., even within the nightmarish imaginative realms where he finds himself that Bloom has come to appear even to himself as an outsider due to his unclassified status in native vs. foreign terms. Though the degree to which Bloom belongs within his hallucinations and thus feels at home within his mind shifts drastically in the episode, these shifts consistently reflect the severity of that trauma, and the difficulty in harnessing power from the complexity of his position, and in healing from his trauma without severing himself entirely from his reality that is charged by this divide.

More specifically, I was interested in mentions and descriptions of, as well as allusions to apocalypse within the episode, considering the prevalence representations of the apocalypse as being produced from a fundamental opposition between native and foreign elements (often masked as good vs. evil). Though Stephen eventually casts the final fight, after tensions have reached their peak, in apocalyptic terms (488), he does not do so until after both he and Bloom have recognized the absurdity of each of the three positions involved.

I found that Bloom is implicated centrally and in multiple ways within the opposition of native versus foreign in episodes 4-8. In contrast to Stephen, Bloom is established immediately as a character with the capacity and tendency to consider life from perspectives other than his own and to seemingly impulsively put himself in the shoes of others. In this fundamental way, Bloom’s very nature is one which repeatedly blurs the lines between native and foreign, foreign here being configured as that which is foreign to the self. One of the instances that Joyce uses to establish Bloom as such comes at the beginning of episode 4, when Bloom daydreams of the Orient, and then breaks away from this stereotyped fantasy when he considers that his conception of this foreign land is one that has perhaps been dictated untruthfully. In this moment, Bloom’s openmindedness is the means through which Joyce brings into relief a crucial distinction between the foreign that is depicted and that which actually exists. That Bloom in falls back into the daydream of the Orient despite that he has made this recognition at later points in the texts suggests both Bloom’s desire to escape his immediate circumstances as well as his ability to find comfort in that which he knows to be unreal.

In these episodes, another way in which Bloom is configured into the opposition of native vs. foreign is through his relationship to the land, both literally and figuratively. At the end of episode 4, Bloom considers working in his garden in some specificity, revealing a knowledge that seems to convey a strong connection with the land and desire to maintain it. Yet he ultimately decides against it because the last time he gardened he was stung by a bee. Here and in other instances in this episode (e.g. when Bloom considers buying a tract of land in a newly founded Zionist colony and when he reveals that he pays a gardener to pull the weeds that surround Rory’s grave), Bloom exhibits a desire to cultivate (and perhaps also, exploit) the land, to profit both materially and spiritually from this work,  yet also an aversion towards this work and unwillingness to perform it himself. Here the reader is forced to consider whether

In chapters 7 & 8, Bloom’s appears to be the foreigner, the outsider, within the social spaces and situations that he must navigate. Despite that his social manor clashes starkly with those of the characters with whom he interacts in these episodes, he is also aligned with the nationalist cause (most clearly at the beginning of chapter 8), and thereby comes to occupy both the position of the native and the foreigner. Considering that Bloom is the only Jewish character that we have encountered in the text thus far, his is further enforced through MacHugh’s equation of the Irish to the Jews in Egypt that he sustains throughout the episode. In episode 9, Bloom reveals that his conception of home, the foundation of a “native” positioning, is contingent both upon sex and food, which are most notably carnal rather than political aspects.

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.

After reading the Mullins article, I’m interested in seeing how meaning is passed through advertisement within the magazine and how these features interact with the text entries of the novel. Advertising was a relatively new enterprise at that time, and prior to reading the Mullins article I hand’t heard of anyone around this time experimenting with selection and arrangement of ads so as to engage the reader on any level beyond engendering want. That the editors of The Little Journal were highly aware of the somewhat ironic aspirations they had for their journal, to comment on and critique mass society, while simultaneously relying upon it, and used advertisement as a means to articulate this irony, seems especially unique to the time and this journal in particular. In viewing the journal, I intend to pay particular attention to how ads are presented therein, what they mean in their confined context and how, or whether, their meaning changes when considered alongside the Ulysses text.

I noticed interaction between native and foreign most prominently in the exchange between the milk woman and other characters. When the milkwoman arrives, she is first described in unspecific terms, as an “entering form”. Yet, through Stephen’s description, she becomes characterized as a symbol of Irish identity. Later, however, when Haines speaks to her in Irish, she is unable to recognize the language and mistakes it for French. That an English man would know Irish and a native Irish woman does not, undermines Stephen’s earlier romanticization of her and grounds him back in reality where this complicated dynamic of native and foreign elements is occurring. Not only has the growing anglicization of Ireland by the British distanced Irish natives from their heritage, but that heritage has now come under the ownership and control of British influence. Here Joyce appears to assert that the Irish Literary Revival must take a balanced approached, one which both seeks to reattach the Irish people with their roots but also recognizes that the identity that they seek to reclaim does no longer exist in the form that it appears in through excessive romanticization.