This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Joyce, Philosophy and the Drama of Authorship Mary Raffan PhD in English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2014 Declaration This is to certify that this thesis has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Mary Raffan Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2-3 Abbreviations 4-5 Introduction 6-17 Chapter 1: The Age of Criticism [Joyce’s early writing] 18 i. A blind patch in his mind: Joyce, Moore and the temperament of the 18-19 artist ii. The Man of Letters: Joyce, Yeats and the cult of art 19-28 iii. The quest for certitude: the artist and ‘what is called modern 29-33 philosophy’ iv. A mind like Spinoza: Joyce, Synge and the posture of the philosopher 33-37 v. A heroic fable: Bruno and the modern hero 37-43 vi. An insidious theory: Joyce, Wilde and the nation of art critics 43-50 vii. The most impractical of theorists: the ‘ineradicable egoism’ of the 50-54 artist and Wilde’s Individualism Chapter 2: The Age of Enlightenment [Stephen Hero] 55 i. An inhuman theorist 55-56 ii. The burgher notion of genius 56-59 iii. The incessant labour of art 59-62 iv. The idea of the classical 62-65 v. The ideal of scholarship 65-70 vi. The passion for a supremely satisfying order 70-73 vii. Beauty and the splendour of truth 73-81 viii. Epiphany and the mechanism of esthetic apprehension 81-84 ix. The gift of certitude 84-87 x. Intuition: the moment of radiant simultaneity 87-90 Chapter 3: The Age of Reason [A Portrait of the Artist] 91 i. A Synopsis Philosophiae Scholasticae 91-92 ii. On the (sin-loving) Soul 93-97 iii. Scholasticism: a break-water of order and elegance 97-100 iv. Sublimity of mind 101-104 v. Beware of martyrdom 104-106 vi. The tragic emotion 107-112 vii. The broken lights of Irish myth 113-118 Chapter 4: The Age of Liturgy [Ulysses] 119 I. Critic i. Thinking without chops: the economy of authorship in modernity 119-125 ii. Author-journalist. A literary occupation? 126-131 II. Bard i. A dreadful bard 131-140 ii. Musemathematics: The decay of the aura(l)? 140-145 III. Philosopher i. Perverted transcendentalism and the hubbub of phenomenon 145-151 ii. That queer thing genius 151-158 iii. A distinguished phenomenologist 158-162 IV. Theologian i. Ritual: a rest for the poet 163-166 ii. In duty bound: A server of a servant 166-174 iii. The chaste fancy of the Holy Writer 175-180 Chapter 5: The Age of Hermeneutics [Finnegans Wake] 181 I. Critic i. The work of art: ef thes es whot ye deux, then I'm not surpleased 181-185 ye want that bottle of Sauvequipeu ii. Sifted science will do your arts good 185-190 iii. An Easyathic Phallusaphist 191-195 iv. A learned scholarch 195-198 v. The comicalbottomed copsjute and the gobblydumped turkery 198-203 II. Bard i. The Annexandreian captive conquest: the quest for the true Homer 204-214 ii. Dies in dorminus: How our myterbilder his fullen aslip 214-219 III. Philosopher i. The nightly quisquiquock 220-226 ii. The apophotorejected artist: a shuddersome spectacle 227-232 iii. The funnaminal world of art 233-236 IV. Theologian i. The phost of a nation 236-239 ii. A panromain apological 240-241 iii. A drama parapolylogic 242-243 Conclusion 244-251 Works Cited 252-269 2 Acknowledgements I owe a special thanks to my supervisors Dr. Lee Spinks and Dr. Aaron Kelly for all their support, encouragement and insight. I would also like to thank Dr. Stephanie Winder for her many inspiring tutorials on Homer and Hellenism that have contributed substantially to this thesis. Without my parents, John and Georgia Raffan, who have supported me all these years in so many ways, inspiring me to continue with my studies, this thesis would not have been possible. My brothers James and Damian have also stood by me with love and reassurance. I would also like to thank my friends for all their support, patience and understanding, in particular Sarah Ames, for her friendship, cups of coffee that have kept me sane and awake and her invaluable advice, particularly in the final stages of this thesis, Ioanna Kuriakou for all her moral support and patience, and Kat Taxidou who has listened to me from a very young age talking about Finnegans Wake and has been such a good friend to me in spite of this. My biggest debt, however, is to Steven McKay who has relentlessly supported and encouraged me with extraordinary patience and with lots of practical advice. 1 Abstract This thesis will examine the representation, consequence and transformation of the idea of authorship in the work of James Joyce and suggest a way of re-addressing the contentious question of authorship. While postmodern criticism has emphasised the “revolutionary” cultural and political ramifications of Joyce’s response and the ways that his work has helped to deconstruct this question for modernity and postmodernity, this thesis will trace the ideas and ideologies, individuals and characters, historical, cultural and biographical circumstances that contributed to both the prominence and the hermeneutical consequence of the question of authorship in Joyce’s work. Highlighting Joyce’s awareness of and fascination with the multivalency of a question shaped by theological, historical, political, philosophical, philological, epistemological, methodological and hermeneutical ideas as well as literary representations, it will examine Joyce’s reformulation and response to this question through four pervasive models of authorship in his work: critic, philosopher, bard and theologian. While each chapter will make a distinction between these models in order to analyse their characteristics and significance, as a way of tracing not only the evolution of these models but also the complex network of interrelation that is established between these distinctive but also intertwining ideas of authorship, the thesis will be structured historically, biographically and “ergographically” (in Barthes’ definition of an ‘ergography’) as well as thematically. As a way of approaching the ideologically overdetermined concept of authorship, but also avoiding another postmodern “renaming” of this concept, these models will be proffered in order to examine the construction, fabrication and invention as well as the deconstruction of the idea of authorship and the representation of the role of the author in fiction, culture, society and history in the work of Joyce. The “drama” of authorship will be interpreted in terms of Joyce’s fictional and hermeneutic dramatisation of the role and idea of the author, but also in terms of the consequence of Joyce’s interest in and early idealisation of the genre of drama. This thesis will finally suggest that Joyce’s “failure” to become a dramatist and engagement with philosophical analyses of this genre contributed significantly to his deconstruction, reconstruction and dramatisation of the role and “exagmination” of the author. The thesis as a whole will delineate how each of these four models gradually becomes more distinctive but simultaneously also inextricable from a variegated template that is only methodologically divided into four parts; the four exegetes in Finnegans Wake inconspicuously multiply. The first three chapters will follow the attempt outlined in Joyce’s 2 early draft of the Portrait ‘to liberate from the personalised lumps of matter that which is their individuating rhythm, the first or formal relation of their parts’- the growing self- consciousness of the artist’s understanding of his role(s) as an artist and of the idea(s) of authorship. In the last two chapters that will look at Ulysses and Finnegans Wake these four models will be more clearly differentiated although the growing theatricality in their portrayal and widening nexus of relations will complicate and indeed undermine the idea of a “model”. 3 Abbreviations P Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916. London: Penguin, 2000. CH Deming, Robert H. Ed. James Joyce: The Critical Heritage, Vol. I: 1902-1927 and Vol II: 1928-41. 1970. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986; 1997. CAJ Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. DA Aristotle. De Anima. Trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. D Joyce, James. Dubliners. 1914. London: Penguin, 1996. FW Joyce, Joyce. Finnegans Wake. 1939. London: Faber and Faber, 1980. JJ Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. 1959. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Letters I, II, III Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce. vol. I, Ed. Stuart Gilbert; vols. II and III, Ed. Richard Ellmann. New York: The Viking Press, 1957; 1966. NE Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. W. D. Ross. The Internet Classics Archive. OCPW Joyce, James. Occasional, Critical and Political Writing. Ed. Kevin Barry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.