LINGUISTIC BASIS OF STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ULYSSES BY Annette Briones THE LINGUISTIC BASIS OF STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES by Annette Briones A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English McGil1 University, Montreal, Canada March 1973 o Annette briones 1973 ABSTRACT James Joyce's Ulysses re~resented a vast change in the novel form and presented many problems of inter~retation. Attemnts to describe this highly unconventional work re­ sulted in the literary category of "stream of consciousness", a term borrowed from psychological theories and adapted to account for the characteristics of works like Ulysses, which were felt to be primarily different from traditional novels because they depicted a wider range of consciousness. In­ corporated into this theory were analogies with music and the cinema to expIa in how such range of consciousness could be presented in a literary forme In short, extra-linguistic theories were being used to de scribe the art of language. Although Ulysses undoubtedly makes statements about areas like psychology and music, it is not appropriate to use the processes it describes to exnIain the way in which they are described. On this basis, this thesis tries. 1. to show how the established stream of consciousness the ory rails to account for the unconventional characteris­ tics of Uly~ and 2. to show how an analysis of the text based on how it relates to the general linguistic system results in more accurate explanations. RESUME" Le roman de James Joyce, Ulysses, reprp.sente un vaste changement dans le roman traditionnel et présente des prob­ lémes d'interprétation. L'effort ~our interpréter cette oeuvre hautement originale avait abouti à la création d'une nouvelle catégorie de critique littéraire, le "stream of consciousness" , expression empruntée des théories psycho­ logiques et adaptée pour expliquer les caractéristiques d' oeuvres du genre d'Ulysses. Ces oeuvre~ avaient eté con­ sidérp.es comme ptant fondamentalement différentes des_romans traditionnels parcequ'elles traitent plusiers niveaux du psychisme. On avaient inclus dans cette théorie des analo­ gies avec la musique et le cinéma pour expliquer comment les différents niveaux du psychisme pouvaient ~tre representés dans une forme littéraire. En d'autres mots, des théories extralinguistiques avaient eté utilisées pour expliquer l'art du langage. Même s'il est évident que l'auteur fait des allusions ~ la ~sychologie et à la musique, il n'est pas juste d'utilser les processus dont il parle pour expliquer la façon dont ils sont décrits. Suivant cette forme de raisonnement, cette th~se veut prouver que 1. la thp.orie bien établie du "stream of consciousness" ne reussit pas à expliquer convenablement les caractéristiques uniques d'Ulysses; 2. l'analyse du texte littpraire baspe sur ses rapports avec le système linguistique offre des explications plus précises. TABLE OF CONTENTS l INTRODUCTION •• 0 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• iii 1. Description of the established stream of consciousness theory •• ~..... iv 2. Description of the theoretical framework underlying the analysis of Ulysses in Part II................. ix II TEXT ANALYSIS •••••••••••••••••••••••••• o •••• 2 Selection of passages from Ulysses chosen for discussion by Stream of Consciousness critics and discussed in the order of the episodes in which they appeara Telemachus......................... 2 Proteus •••• 0 •••••••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 11 Lotus Eaters....................... 19 Aeolus.o........................... 22 Lestrygonians •••••••••••••••••• oo.. 26 Wandering Rocks.................... 29 Sirens. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 45 Nausicaa. , ••••••• , ••••• ~ ••• , •• a , , • • 56 Penelope, •••••••••••••••••••••••• o. 62 III CONCLUSION ••• 0 D ••••••••• 0 •••••••• D ••••••••• 70 APPENDIX ·.0 •• 0 •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 77 BIBLIOGRAPHY ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 82 ii PART l INTRODUCTION iii The publication of James Joyce's Ulysses signalled a vast change in narrative techniques from traditional novels. Theories or methods already in use for describing the novel form did not seem applicable to this new form of narrative which was considered by many readers and cri tics as incoherent, chaotic and generally unintelligible. GraduaI attempts by commentators on Ulysses to interpret it more precisely re- sulted in a new literary category called "stream of consciousness". Although many critics have discussed the concept of stream of consiousnessl in relation to works like Ulysses2 , the two books to date that have dealt most comprehensively and specifically with the,subject are Robert Humphrey's Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Nove1 3 and Stream of Consciousnessl A Study of a Literary Method4 by Melvin J. Friedman. It is the theory as it has been outlined by these two authors that will be considered as the "established" stream of consciousness theory in this paper. The term "stream of consciousness" (hereafter referred to as SC) was originally suggested by William James in his Principles of Psychology: ISee for example the works by Erich Auerbach, David Daiches, Alan Friedman and Ian Watt, cited in the bibliography. 2Similarly unconventional novels such as Virginia Woolf's The Waves and William Faulkner's As l Lay Dying were also included in this category. 3Second printin5 (University of California Press, 1955) 4(Yale University Press, 1955) iv " Consciousness ••• does not appear to itse1f chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not de scribe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. lt is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most natura1ly described ••• let us call it the stream of thou,ht, of consciousness or of objective life. But as James' idea became incorporated into a literary theory it was combined with Freud's theory of the unconsciousl lt is probably following the appearance of F~eud's psychoanalytic study of ••• Jensen's Gravida in 1907 that the preconscious and un­ consciou~ became the legitimate domain of fiction. Both Humphrey and Friedman maintain that the feature which primarily differentiates SC novels from traditional novels is its subject matter which is the exploration of human consciousness. But at the same time they acknow1edge that many earlier novels a1so dealt with the human psyche. How­ ever, they feel that these do not properly come under the heading of SC because they do not depict consciousness in the same "flowing" way that was described by James. Therefore they could not traverse as wide an area of the psyche as the SC nove1. In distinguishing the SC novel from earlier psycho- logical fiction, Friedman goes so far as to sayl 1 (N.Y., 1904), l, p. 239. 2Me1vin J. Friedman, OP. cit., p. 7 - However, Friedman does point out that "although recent 1iterature tends to re1y on many of the same devices as psychoanalytic inter­ pretations ••• one must be careful not to identify these novelists as the inheritors of Freud, though the tempta­ tion is often strong". (p. 102). v The novel of narration, attempting communication by means of conventional syntax, is troublesome and exhaustive; the stream of consciousness novel, on the con~ary, carries on uninterruptedly without difficulty, working spontaneously, with reminiscences and anti­ cipations.l Such distinction is very difficult to accept when we consider the many difficulties in interpretation that a work like Ulysses presents (difficulties that will be made explicit in the text analysis to follow in Part II). Although Humphrey and Friedman both exercise caution in the wholesale application of psychological theories to fiction, they fre- quently describe the unconventional passages in Ulysses solely in such terms as "margin of attention", "pre-speech level", "fantasy thinking" and "subconscious", and differ- entiate passages from one another in accordance with the areas of consciousness supposedly being represented. Since there is no evidence in the field of psychology for the existence of such levels, any attempts' .to describe li terary texts in these terms results in vagueness. But even if such areas of consciousness did prove to exist, there is no reason to assume that their existence could account for the characteristics of so-called SC novels that differentiate them from other kinds of verbal art or other kinds of discourse in general. While Joyce is obviously making certain statements about human thinking in Ulysses and it is there­ fore appropria~e to comment on these statements, it is not useful or even 'appropria~e to use the processes being described as a means of text analysis. lIbid., p. 4. vi Humphrey and Friedman see literary SC as being essentially a genre within which various techniques are possible and often necessary for depicting the many levels of hum an consciousness it seeks to de al with. Although the techniques and devices described by each for depicting SC, differ in details, there are a few general ones regardect by both as being common to thlS kind of narrative. These are: 1. s~ppressed intervention of the author; 2. the use of musical elements such as the leitmotif and the fugal form; 3. the use of cinematic techniques, particularly montage. "Suppressed" intervention of the author as opposed to the "omniscient" author in conventional narrative is felt to render Ul',rsses more "realistic". Again, considering