**due to formatting issues, I’ve also attached a word document to this blog post.

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Forms

blind, blindly, blinder

Related Terms

Curious

Glass

Limp

Shell

Explication

Blind, and the ways in which the word relates to sight and the prevention of seeing, serves a few main purposes throughout Ulysses, mostly surrounding the function of sight. The first comes in the noun form of the word—an item that blocks out light or causes individuals to lose the ability to see. Throughout the novel, the image of a blind often comes up with reference to a character’s proximity to a window and the purpose it does or does not serve. One of the first interactions readers witness between Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly, involves an inquiry about a physical blind: “—Do you want the blind up? / Letting the blind up by gentle tugs…” (U. 4.255-256). In this sense, the object of a blind operates a noun with a specific purpose: to prevent a certain capability (sight or light) from occurring.

The ways in which blind insinuates the prevention of sight and inability to see is a trend continued by the repetitive use of the adjective form of the word as well. Blind as an illustrative adjective reoccurs throughout the novel, often used to describe historical figures (i.e. “old blind Abraham” U. 5.201), as well as recurring characters (refer to U. 8.1075). As expected, this form of blind depicts images of those who cannot see. Throughout the novel this form is used to both describe characters that are actually incapable of sight, or simply those who show attributes that would label them as such (i.e. obliviousness). This less literal version of blind as an adjective comes about to describe a certain type of belief that appears at different moments throughout Ulysses. Because it is a novel filled with (often ironic) religious imagery, Joyce’s word choice of “blind faith” (U. 5. 377) must be evaluated with this tone in mind. In this way, blind comes up as a description of those who take comforts in religion without any worry or deeper understanding, a concept complicated throughout Ulysses.

The recurrent usage of the word blind persists as an involuntary situation of sorts when considering the use of the word as a verb. Although sparsely used throughout the novel, blind as a verb does come up to convey the action of causing a state characterized by the inability to see. Such a use seems to illuminate not only the repetition of the unfortunate state, but also the more harsh connotations that can come along with it. The first time the verb form of blind occurs is in reference to both an animal, and not actually carrying out the action: “it wouldn’t blind him” (U. 12. 700). Although this portrays an occurrence in which the verb wouldn’t actually happen, the repetitive use of the word throughout Ulysses makes such an instance stand out. The novel spends much time depicting characters (and animals) with reference to their ability to see, and their awareness of the space in which they inhabit. By reusing the word in its various forms, blind appears to describe multiple conditions characterized by lack of an attribute.

Definitions and Examples

1. Blind, n.
   I. Anything which obstructs the light or sight. (OED 1).

• “Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway” (U. 4.256)
• “The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased. The blindof the window was drawn aside.” (U. 10.249-250) 
• “Miss Douce’s brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the drop blindwith a sliding cord.” (U. 11.460-462)

II. spec. A screen for a window, made of woven material mounted on a roller, of wire gauze,etc.; used to prevent the entrance of too much light, or to keep people from seeing in. Venetian blindsn. those made of light laths fixed on strips of webbing. (OED 2)

• “He passed an arm through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blindsof the avenue” (U. 6.10-12)
• “The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blind” (U. 6.360-361)

Special Uses: blind faith. belief or confidence (in a person or thing) without any evidence or proof. (OED)

• Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year. (U. 5.377-378)

2. Blind, adj. (and adv.).
   I. Literal
   a. Destitute of the sense of sight, whether by natural defect or by deprivation (OED 1.a).

• “The scene he was always talking about where the old blindAbraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face” (U. 5.201-202)·
• “A blindstripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross. –Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked. The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his head uncertainly.” (U. 8.1075-1079)
• “You’re blinder nor I am, you bitch’s bastard!” (U. 1119-1120)

i. to go it blind: to act without previous investigation of the circumstances; to plunge without regard to the risks involved.

• “Phew! Dreadful simply! Child’s head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out.” (U. 8.374-376)·

  d. absol. A blind person, esp. as pl. Those who are blind, as a section of the community. (OED 1.d)

  · “they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying” (U. 12.1723-1726)

IV. Combinations
15. General, as blind-born, blind-drunk (Sc. blin’-fou), so intoxicated as to see no better than a blind man (OED IV.15)

• “I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God” (U. 12.1393-1394)

3. Blind, v.
   I. trans. To make blind, deprive of sight (OED 1).
   a. permanently

• “I’d train him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn’t blind” (U. 12.698-700)

Related Topics

Science, Thought and Action, Ability, Medicine

White, Patrick. “The Key in ‘Ulysses.’” James Joyce Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1, 1971, pp. 10-25.

Link to citation page: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25486940?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=the&searchText=house&searchText=of&searchText=keys&searchText=in&searchText=ulysses&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe%2Bhouse%2Bof%2Bkeys%2Bin%2Bulysses%26amp%3Bprq%3D%2522images%2Bin%2Bulysses%2522%26amp%3Bso%3Drel%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bhp%3D25%26amp%3Bacc%3Don%26amp%3Bwc%3Don&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Link to full text: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25486940.pdf

Related Topics:

Power Dynamics, Relationships, Imagery

In “The Key to ‘Ulysses,’” Patrick White analyzes the use of the image of a key throughout the novel, specifically how it comes to define certain power dynamics between characters. White begins by first discussing the ways in which previous analyses have offered slight insights into the topic, but have rarely given readers an in depth look into the ways in which keys appear as a crucial “motif” (10) over the course of Ulysses. The author offers brief descriptions of the previous explorations of the key image by other critics such as S. K. Goldberg and Richard Kain, who discuss the recurring key imagery as an “emblem of possession” and “the keylessness of the modern man” (11) respectively. However, White asserts that a more detailed examination of the “key motif” allows for an understanding of the novel itself, in that the symbolism offers “a key to the meaning of Ulysses” (10).

For the majority of the article, White compares the ways in which images of a key comes about in the lives of Stephen and Bloom. White cites specific moments of importance when Stephen “voluntarily gives” (13) the keys in his possession away in the opening episode. White argues that such an action is formulated by Joyce with the goal of specifying the power dynamics between Stephen and Buck Mulligan (in that, by passing over the keys Stephen has acknowledged a weaker position). The article goes on to clarify how, for the analysis of the keys in Bloom’s life, it is crucial to recognize that he “does not consciously part with his key” instead “he simply forgets it” (17). As such, Bloom’s obliviousness to the loss of the key indicates his complete unawareness for the “authoritative dominion” (18) it would imply.

White finishes the article by exploring “Keyes’s ad” (19), prevalent throughout “Aeolus.” In discussing the rich imagery and meaning that comes along with the crossed keys that make up the symbol used by Bloom, the article illuminates how keys can represent authoritative positioning in a context wider than that of the text. White ends the piece by summarizing the characters’ respective statuses within the novel, all dependent on their relation to the possession (or lack thereof) of keys.

Relevant References:

Richard M. Kain, The Babulous Voyager (University of Chicago Press, 1947) and Levin, James Joyce

S. L. Goldberg, The Classical Temper (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), p. 154.

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