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Rereading Joyce's 'Oxen of the Sun'

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Rereading Joyce's 'Oxen of the Sun' Tokyo Medical and Dental University ‘Un’ writing the Nation: Rereading Joyce’s ‘Oxen of the Sun’ 小野瀬宗一郎 東京医科歯科大学教養部研究紀要 第４２号抜刷 ２０１２年３月 NII-Electronic Library Service Tokyo Medical and Dental University 東京医科歯科大学教養部研究紀要第 42 号：63〜74（2012） ‘Un’writing the Nation: Rereading Joyce’s ‘Oxen of the Sun’ Soichiro ONOSE 0. 和文要旨・キーワード 本論文は、ジェイムズ・ジョイス著『ユリシーズ』の第十四挿話、「太陽神の牛」 をアイルランド研究／ポストコロニアル批評の見地から再考する。既存の研究は往々 にして「太陽神の牛」における技法をモダニズム的な視座から分析してきた。特に挿 話中のパロディにおいてはこの傾向が顕著である。本論文は「太陽神の牛」を取り巻 く歴史的文脈に着目し、同挿話を19世紀末から20世紀初頭にかけて隆盛した「アイリ ッシュ・リバイバル」との関係において論じる。なかんずく、国民言語の復興を巡る 言説との往還の中に「太陽神の牛」を位置づけ、ポストコロニアル批評家であるホミ・ バーバの理論を援用しつつ、同挿話のテーマと技法の新しい解釈を試みる。 Keywords: James Joyce, ‘Oxen of the Sun’, Irish nationalism, Gaelic revival, Douglas Hyde, Parody, Homi Bhabha, ‘DissemiNation’ Ⅰ. Introduction This paper attempts a rereading of James Joyce’s ‘Oxen of the Sun’ in Ulysses, an episode that remains the bête noir of critics. Arguably, ‘Oxen’ is the most technically challenging episode of the book. As Joyce would have it, the theme is ‘the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition’ (Joyce 1975: 251). To represent this theme in the text, Joyce offers up a cornucopia of English literary styles associated with writers from various historical periods, which somehow are to mirror biological processes. In a letter he sent to his friend Frank Budgen, Joyce elaborates on the significance of the literary- biological correspondences. As it is considered to be the skeleton key to ‘Oxen’, I shall quote it at length: Technique: a nineparted episode without divisions introduced by a Sallustian- Tacitean prelude (the unfertilized ovum), then by way of earliest English alliterative and monosyllabic and Anglo-Saxon … then by way of Mandeville … then Malory’s Morte d’Arthur … then the Elizabethan chronicle style … then a passage solemn, as of Milton, Taylor, Hooker, followed by a choppy Latin-gossipy bit, style of Burton- Browne, then a passage Bunyanesque … after a diarystyle bit Pepys-Evelyn … and so on through Defoe-Swift and Steele-Addison-Sterne and Landor-Pater-Newman until it ends in a frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel. This progression is also linked back at each part subtly with some foregoing episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural 63 NII-Electronic Library Service Tokyo Medical and Dental University stages of development in the embryo and the periods of faunal evolution in general. (Joyce 1975: 251) Many critics since Stewart Gilbert１ have seized on this enigmatic prompt and suggested insightful interpretations. Yet as Weldon Thornton remarks, none has provided a reading that unifies the theme and form in a meaningful way (Thornton 2000: 145). Indeed, there are too many loose ends in Joyce’s twining together of biology and literature that the tenuous analogy collapses sooner or later. The problem that ‘Oxen’ raises perhaps tells us more about the assumptions of the previous generation of critics than the episode. Past readings have largely focused on the aesthetic implications of the linguistic experimentations and missed the political import. Thus the critical aporia ‘Oxen’ evinces is a generic one for reading Ulysses. With an aim to address this imbalance, critics informed by Irish Studies / postcolonial theory stress the political nature of Joyce’s texts.２ For one, Len Platt reads Ulysses as ‘a hilarious subversion’ of the ideology associated with the Protestant Ascendancy (Platt 1998: 105). To extend scholarship on Ulysses in this area, I attempt to read ‘Oxen of the Sun’ in the historical context of the language revival. In discussing the interrelation of the language and politics of Ulysses, the ‘Cyclops’ episode has often been the point of departure. However, I argue that ‘Oxen’ offers valuable material for enriching such analysis by providing more insight into how Joyce responds to the specific ideology that shaped the movement. To this end, the linguistic permutations in ‘Oxen’ will be read politically by adapting Homi K. Bhabha’s theory on the discourse of nationalism. While Bhabha’s theory is still useful, its argument is perhaps too abstract. In order to present a constructive postcolonial reading of Ulysses, Bhabha’s theory needs to be recalibrated to its specific Irish colonial context. In doing so, I will also reconsider the usefulness of postcolonial theories for reading modernist Irish literature. Ⅱ. Joyce and the Gaelic Revival Before proceeding to the textual analysis of ‘Oxen’, I would like to briefly sketch how the language revival has informed preceding texts of Joyce in ways that reveal his sustained interest in the question of language and nationality. Following the death of the nationalist leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, and the attendant demise of the Home Rule movement,３ leading Ango-Protestant intellectuals of the day including W. B. Yeats turned to the study of ancient Irish culture and language in the hopes of fashioning a new identity for Ireland. This initiative quickly won the hearts and minds of the public, efflorescing into a broad-fronted cultural nationalism known as the Irish Literary Revival.４ In particular, the debate over language and nationality has intensified from the mid-1890s on. A key text encapsulating the ethos of this movement is Douglas Hyde’s speech, ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’, delivered in 1892 at the Irish National Literary Society. Taking a purist stand, Hyde argues that the revitalization of Ireland is only possible by replacing English with the native tongue: 64 NII-Electronic Library Service Tokyo Medical and Dental University I have no hesitation at all in saying that every Irish-feeling Irishman, who hates the reproach of West-Britonism, should set himself to encourage the efforts which are being made to keep alive our once great national tongue. The losing of it is our greatest blow, and the sorest stroke that the rapid Anglicisation of Ireland has inflicted upon us. In order to de-Anglicise ourselves we must at once arrest the decay of the language. We must bring pressure upon our politicians not to snuff it out by their tacit discouragement merely because they do not happen themselves to understand it. We must arouse some spark of patriotic inspiration among the peasantry who still use the language, and put an end to the shameful state of feeling. (Hyde 1894: 136-37) The following year, the Gaelic League was established with an aim to institutionalize the teaching and learning of Gaelic. As Brian Ó Cuív indicates, Gaelic was in dire straits at the turn of century. In 1891, the population of Gaelic-speakers was a mere 14.5 percent of the total population, hardly amounting to a ‘national’ language in terms of its currency (Ó Cuív 1966-89: 389). The League, however, lived up to its promise. During the next few decades, the number of Gaelic speakers steadily increased. Yet while for Hyde the revival of Gaelic was certainly vital, he considered it as a step toward ‘de-Anglicising’ the habits and minds of the Irish. What he resented the most was the rampant ‘West-Britonism’, the custom of imitating English and European cultures due to a nagging sense of inferiority. Hyde hoped that elevating the status of Gaelic through the League would give the Irish people an identity to be proud of. The furor of language movement spilled over, resulting in the establishment of nationalist institutions in other fields. The most famous of these included the Irish Literary Theatre (later The Abbey Theatre), the Gaelic Athletic Association, and the Feis Ceoil music festival. While many Irish intellectuals hailed revivalism as the ‘new’ nationalism to take the place of Parnellism, Joyce remained aloof, dismissing the revivalist endeavor with amused contempt. His harshest criticism was reserved for the Gaelic revival. Joyce wrote to his brother Stanislaus that ‘Imperialism will conquer Ireland. If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language, I suppose I could call myself a nationalist. As it is, I am content to recognise myself as an exile: and, prophetically, a repudiated one’ (Joyce 1966: 187). That Joyce equates Gaelic revival with imperialism is revealing. On one level, his comment suggests that revivalism was no better than imperialism when it came to (mis)representing Irish culture and identity. This problem is addressed in a text as early as ‘The Dead’. In one scene, Gabriel Conroy is accused by the ardent Gaelic Leaguer Miss Ivors of being a ‘West Brition’ for his indifference toward the language movement: −And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with - Irish? asked Miss Ivors. −Well, said Gabriel, if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language. … 65 NII-Electronic Library Service Tokyo Medical and Dental University −And haven't you your own land to visit, continued Miss Ivors, that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country? −O, to tell you the truth, retorted Gabriel suddenly, I'm sick of my own country, sick of it! (Joyce 1996[1914]: 189) The exchange undercuts the presumed success of Gaelic revival, which actually divided rather than solidified the Irish community around the question of national language. Thanks to the Gaelic League, learning Irish is no longer a matter of taste or family background. It has emphatically become for all Irishmen a patriotic duty, the failure to carry out which may lead to stigmatization, or worse, ostracization by the community. Rather than broadening the category of ‘Irishness’, the revivalists reduced it to a stereotype. In doing so, they denied modernity and diversity to the Irish nation. The language movement was dismissed by Joyce not only because it replicated the imperialist ideology in different but similar terms, but also played into the hands of the British. By opting to use Irish and making themselves incommunicable to the rest of the world, Joyce thought, the Irish were invariably following the fate of the Gaelic speaking peasant, who was no better than a ‘deaf-mute’ before the English tribunal which sentenced him to death (Joyce 2000: 146).
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