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Durham E-Theses Advertising and Dublin's Consumer Culture in James Joyce's Ulysses HAYWARD, MATTHEW,CHRISTOPHER How to cite: HAYWARD, MATTHEW,CHRISTOPHER (2012) Advertising and Dublin's Consumer Culture in James Joyce's Ulysses, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5914/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Advertising and Dublin’s Consumer Culture in James Joyce’s Ulysses Matthew Hayward Thesis submitted to the Department of English Studies, University of Durham, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2012 Abstract This thesis reconsiders James Joyce’s representation of advertising and Dublin’s consumer culture in Ulysses. Against earlier, generalising accounts, it applies a carefully historicising methodology to demonstrate the cultural specificity of Joyce’s engagement. It does so in three ways. To begin with, it establishes that Irish consumerism did not simply follow British advances, but developed in a distinct and inflected fashion. Chapters 2 and 3 show that while Joyce incorporates all of the material characteristics of Dublin’s relatively advanced consumer culture, he downplays its advertising industry, making it appear less developed in 1904 than was historically the case. Secondly, it analyses the distortions introduced by Joyce’s own historical remove from the consumer culture he depicts. Chapter 4 identifies for the first time the sources of Joyce’s “Advertising” notes from his so-called “Notes on Business and Commerce,” and establishes that his representation of Bloom’s advertising consciousness reflects advances in advertising theory that only got seriously underway in the decade between 1904, when the novel is set, and 1914, when Joyce began to write it. Finally, having analysed the material and compositional background to Joyce’s portrayal of early-twentieth-century consumerism, this thesis analyses Joyce’s engagement with two of its dominant ideologies. Chapter 5 concentrates on the ‘Lestrygonians’ and ‘Ithaca’ episodes to argue that Joyce lays bare the overdetermined nature of colonial consumption, depicting the naturalisation of British commodities on the Irish market, and contesting the spurious claim to disinterestedness presented by imperial consumerist discourses. Chapter 6 develops intertextual readings of the ‘Nausicaa’ chapter to show that Joyce’s narrative is even more fully comprised of the language of female-oriented advertising than has been recognised. It argues that the chapter responds to a particular ideological complex, in which consumerist imperatives struggled with more conservative patriarchal interests. Overall, this thesis brings together historical, genetic and intertextual critical approaches to uncover the stylistic and chronological manipulations involved in Joyce’s fictionalisation of early-twentieth-century Irish consumerism. It argues that Ulysses stands as both a reflection of this crucial period of socio-economic change, and a politicised response to its dominant ideological coercions. 1 Acknowledgements I must begin by thanking the Leverhulme Trust for funding this research. I am most sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Dr John Nash, whose guidance, encouragement, and support have been exceeded only by his patience. This thesis was written as part of the “Consumer Culture, Advertising and Literature in Ireland, 1848-1921” project, and I thank all of that team, particularly Prof John Strachan and Dr Alison O’Malley-Younger, for their friendship and support. At the University of Durham, I would like to thank the Department of English Studies, and especially Prof Stephen Regan, Prof Pat Waugh, and Dr Sam Thomas. My thanks also to Ustinov College. Several chapters of this thesis were written at the Zürich James Joyce Foundation, and I am extremely grateful both to the Foundation itself, for the scholarship that allowed me to make use of their resources in 2010, and to Fritz Senn, Ursula Zeller, Ruth Frehner and Frances Ilmberger, for their welcoming hospitality. Scholarships from the UCD James Joyce Research Centre, the International James Joyce Foundation, and the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature have enabled me to attend conferences, colloquia and symposia. I thank those institutions, and I thank the participants at these conferences, from whom I have learned much. I must thank the staff at the various libraries in which I have conducted this research, particularly Durham University Library, the National Library of Ireland, the British Library, and the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian. I am grateful to all those who have generously contributed their knowledge, advice and understanding over the course of my research. I would especially like to thank Dr Luca Crispi, Prof Andrew Gibson, Prof Anne Fogarty, Felix M. Larkin, Dr Luke McKernan, Ronan Crowley, Prof John McCourt, and all at the “Ulysses for Experts” group, particularly Harald Beck. Friends and colleagues in Durham have offered their own kind of relief: my thanks to James Howard, Megan Wainwright, Gabriel Altay, Carla Handley, Emily Ridge and Clara Dawson. For his personal support throughout my studies, I thank Bob Mortimore. And for all that she has done, I thank Cara Wyatt. Finally, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family, and especially my mother, Diane, for their loving support. This work is dedicated to them, and to the memory of my father. 2 Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables 5 List of Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1. Joyce, Advertising and Consumerism: A Critical History 14 Politicising Joyce 16 Ulysses and the Politics of Consumerism: Early Recognition 20 Ulysses and Advertising: Defining Analyses 24 Determining Dublin’s Advertising Culture 29 Ulysses and Advertising: Subsequent Analyses 33 “When? Now?” History and Theories of Consumerism 38 Chapter 2. Defining Dublin’s Consumer Culture 44 Dublin Labour and the Dublin Poor: Street-sellers and Advertising in Ulysses 48 “The Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis”: The Material Conditions of Dublin’s Consumer Culture 54 Chapter 3. Ulysses and the History of Irish Advertising 65 Advertising and the Newspaper Industry in Ireland and Britain 66 The Irish Advertising Industry up to 1904 73 “A cultured allroundman”: Bloom’s CV 82 “Bloo—cadges ads”: Joyce’s Incomplete Adman 88 “Just a little par”: The Role of the Advertisement Canvasser in Dublin’s Newspaper Industry 95 Chapter 4. Ulysses and Advertising Theory 102 “Rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning the date of conversion”: Reconsidering Joyce’s “Advertising” Notes 102 Bloom and the Psychology of Advertising 110 “To arrest involuntary attention”: Cognition and Connotation in Advertising Theory 117 Chapter 5. Ulysses and the Ideology of Colonial Consumption 130 “Made in Germany”: Imperial Competition and the Irish Consumer 131 English Commodities in the Irish Home 138 “Plumtree’s Potted Meat? Incomplete”: Productive Errors in ‘Ithaca’ 147 Science, Consumerism, and the Ideology of Universal Improvement 155 3 Chapter 6. ‘Nausicaa,’ Intertextuality, and the Gendered Language of Advertising 164 Advertising to Women 167 “But who was Gerty?” Female-oriented Advertising in ‘Nausicaa’ 170 “She would be wild, untrammelled, free”: Consumerism, Gender and Agency 181 Conclusion 194 Bibliography 198 4 List of Figures and Tables Figures Fig. 1. Yeates & Son, Grafton Street, around the turn of the century 44 Fig. 2. Advertisement for Sullivan’s Stout, Kilkenny, promoting local trade 70 Fig. 3. Advertisement for James Cassidy, possible original for the “HOUSE OF KEY(E)S” advertisement 92 Fig. 4. Advertisement for Catesby’s Cork Lino, Tottenham Court Road, London 141 Fig. 5. Early Advertisement for Gilbey’s Invalid Port 144 Fig. 6. Plumtree’s Potted Meat, manufactured in Southport, England 150 Tables Table 1. Distribution of Naether's Advertising “Watchwords” in the ‘Nausicaa’ and 'Penelope' chapters 174 5 List of Abbreviations Page and line numbers without prefix refer to Ulysses, a Critical and Synoptic Edition, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (1921; New York; London: Garland, 1984). In addition, the following abbreviations have been cited parenthetically in the text. CW James Joyce, The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann (London: Faber, 1959). D James Joyce, Dubliners, the corrected text with an explanatory note by Robert Scholes (1914; London: Jonathan Cape, 1967). FW James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939; London: Faber, 1968). Cited by page and line number. JJA James Joyce, The James Joyce Archive, ed. Michael Groden et al., 63 vols. (New York; London: Garland, 1977-79). Cited by volume and page number. JJ Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York: Oxford UP, 1959). JJII Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: New and Revised Edition (New York: Oxford UP, 1982). LI James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce, vol. 1, ed. Stuart Gilbert (London: Faber, 1957). LII James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber, 1966). P James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the definitive text corrected from Dublin Holograph by Chester G. Anderson and ed. Richard Ellmann (1916; New York: Viking Press, 1964). SH James Joyce, Stephen Hero, ed. with introduction by Theodore Spencer; rev. ed. with additional material and a foreword by John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956). Thom’s Thom’s Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin: Thom’s, 1904).