Analyzing Elements of Modernism in James Joyce ‘’Ulysses’’

Elements of modernism will be illuminated through an analysis in terms of

experimental techniques, historiography, and time-space binarism. As one of the
most challenging books to decipher ever, Ulysses is beyond any depictions and it
falls under no category; some even say that it is not a novel to begin with. And
some other claim that labeling the work as modernist is a wrong start since
Ulysses has something more than that: at some point Joyce changed his style and
embodied the post-modern discourse creating a carnival by dissolving the whole
context, narration, the letters, his characters and even himself as the narrator into
the play of language thus canonizing himself as the apostle of high modernism:
the metamorphosis of modernism into post-modernism.
Key words: modernism, stream of consciousness, time-space binarism, post-
modernism, historiography

1. Introduction
Since the late 19th century, ‘modernist novel’ has been flourished in a manner that
is opposite to the traditional novel; hence a modernist writer is thought to have
some political aspects. But the truth is the quintessential modernist writers such as
Joyce, Eliot, Faulkner, were actually anti-politics. They adopted new formal and
thematically aesthetic inspirations which distinguished them from the earlier
modernists. This ‘avant-garde’ interpretation of modernism changed the focus on
form into the one on content. This shift then made it possible for writers not to
limit their creative powers allowing them to use new techniques and methods
which widened their horizon and reshaped their self-perception and also
metaphysical one. The modern consciousness and spirit needed ways of
expression underneath, that a technique of the surface alone cannot approach
(Schorer, 1962, p. 267). Thus, the writers of this genre took the high road; they
discovered allegory as the only solution to overcome this lack of expression. Their
desire for the one, that is ethereal, found its way within time and space with the
Romantics’ heroic and ideal by confronting the history. This ambiguity of naming
the writers can be settled by suggesting new terms such as ‘avant-gardist’, ‘pre’,
and ‘pioneer’ instead of using solely the term ‘modernist’. In this paper, the term
modernist will refer to such various aspects of the writers of the genre.
2. Modernist Perceptions in James Joyce ‘’Ulysses’’
Hermeneutic elements of modernist novel in terms of technique, creativity,
imagination, perception of reality can be traced in Joyce’s Ulysses. T. S. Eliot in
his response to Ulysses announces that:
No one else has built a novel upon such a foundation before: it has never
before been necessary. I am not begging the question in calling Ulysses a
'novel'; and if you call it an 'epic' it will not matter. If it is not a novel it is
simply because the novel is a form which will no longer serve; it is because
the novel, instead of being a form, was simply the expression of an age
which had not sufficiently lost all form to feel the need for something
stricter...The novel ended with Flaubert and with Joyce.
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(as cited in Sicari ,2001, p.193)

Eliot’s review goes on to its more famous articulation of the mythic method, as a
‘’way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and significance to the
immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.’’
(p. 194). With Ulysses, Joyce invented a new kind of writing; it is an allegory, of
course, but it is also builds itself into another kind, which is ‘epic’. And yet none
is enough for Joyce’s way of thinking; neither of them serves to the deepest
purposes of the writer. Understanding Ulysses as an epic can only be possible
through realization of Homer’s Odyssey from which the novel takes its
inspiration. Some claim that Ulysses is the modern interpretation of the epic with
the same goal in mind that is to return home, as some say the exact opposite; from
the choice of the title Ulysses, Joyce tried to keep a distance alienating himself
from the nostalgia, he paradoxically included the epic to stay away from it. The
choice of title may seem ironic but it does not necessarily mean alienation, at least
not at a paradoxical level. As Stevens (1961) puts it:
From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. (p. 383)
In Ulysses then, Joyce’s attempt was to write a novel that is not distant from the
original story. His interest was to highlight the ‘renewal’. That was the ultimate
thought of all the modernists; the old themes are permanent but now with a new
form and language. This characteristic of modern discourse somehow proves that
intertextuality is indeed present in the works of modernists; it does not only
belong to post-modernism. Even further, this could mean that Joyce might
actually be a post-modernist.
In each chapter of Ulysses, the actions of the characters match with the ones in
Odyssey. In the first chapter, we see Stephen Dedalus wandering around the
streets of Dublin without any intentions in mind. This resembles Telemachus’s
search for his father without any hope. Dedalus, on the other hand, does not seem
to look for something but we know, or we sense, that he cannot be an idle
wanderer since he is a man of thought; he is more of a personal character who to
talk of politics, literature, religion. As we know, Dedalus is the protagonist and
anti-hero of the novel A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dedalus is referred
as Joyce’s literary ‘alter-ego’. So in Ulysses, Joyce, the narrator, inserts himself as
Dedalus, a counter character to ordinary man. In the second chapter, we encounter
a Jewish man, Leopold Bloom. He is an everyman with whom the reader
sympathizes in the very first moment. He is Odysseus, trying to get back home,
Ithaca, in search of something. Again we do not know what the ultimate
destination is, what it is that these two men are looking for. Bloom also wanders
around the streets of Dublin where he encounters many things that introduces him
many sensations like jealousy, hate, love, sympathy, apathy, affection and even
one’s love for his children. In the last chapter of the novel, we see Dedalus and
Bloom travel together; it is a spiritual and an intellectual journey shared by them.
They are united in the end; salvation comes in its own way satisfying both their
needs.
Ulysses made a distinctive contribution to the historiography. Recovering the
claims of the epic to represent historical events, Ulysses is an analogous allegory.
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First of all it is a novel city, a time book. It explores the social, cultural and
political state of Ireland which Joyce knows very well. The experimental
techniques he used can be seen as a challenge to give voice to the suppressed,
brutalized and hidden historiography of his hometown. Ulysses elaborates the
fable of Stephen Dedalus’s encounter with Leopold Bloom and their efforts at
continuity as the embodiment of a historical understanding possible for Ireland in
the wake of these concerns (Ungar, 2002, p. 8). Modernist discourse has a desire
to retell the native stories entangled with the obscurity of language. It abandons
the linear technique of exposition; it speaks up for the insane, lunatic and the
overwhelmed. Faulkner criticized the people of the South in his works. He wanted
the world to see from the other part of South America. For Joyce, it is the people
of Ireland with whom we have to sympathize; there is more than meets the eye.
Faulkner (1960) says that “you should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate
Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith” (p. 77). One of the
apparent examples of historical reference to this in the novel is in the ‘‘Ithaca’’
episode when Leopold wants Stephen to “chant in a modulated voice a strange
legend on an allied theme” while they are talking. The lyrics of the song Stephen
chooses make a reference not only to an actual case of blood libel from 13th
century, but it also pertains to anti-Semitism which Bloom suffers as a Jewish
living amongst Irish society. The antagonism of the chant is two-sided: it is a
common problem that Bloom is experiencing everyday and it is also an evocation
of historical anti-Semitism of British culture. The child’s ballad derives from the
“Prioress’ Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (Evan & Jehl, 2013).
Another descriptive aspect of modernism is the obsession of its practitioners with
time and space. This binary framework first came into existence with the Theory
of Relativity. Modernists complied with these two ways of thought. Virginia
Woolf (1980) noted: ‘’I wanted, like a child, to stay and argue. True, the argument
was passing my limits – how, if Einstein is true, we shall be able to foretell our
own lives.” (p. 68) In Ulysses, Joyce eradicated the limits of time by the presence
of Stephen Dedalus, from Portrait; he is our center, reference to all the other
characters and their actions both closing off and opening up the time in the novel.
Derrida defines the center as ‘’ a constant of a presence-essence, existence,
substance, subject… transcendentality, conscience, God, man, and so forth’’
(p. 231-232) As for space, the narration in Ulysses counts for it all the way. The
narration constantly changes in the form of stream of consciousness. A dialogue is
inserted with a simple dash, then it swifts to an interior monologue and eventually
becomes a third person narrative. Especially in internal monologues, stream of
consciousness narration is seen in practice. One of the most famous examples for
this in the book is in the last chapter, chapter 18 called ‘Penelope’, where Molly
Bloom delivers an internal monologue a 4391-word sentence:
...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the
Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under
the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked
him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say
yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew
him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart
was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (Joyce, 2008)
3. Conclusion
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An attempt to analyze Ulysses will almost always end in a frustration. This is the
irony and also the tragedy of language; it is simply not enough for itself. Joyce
knew that when he was writing the inexplicable work of all times. He said ‘’ I've
put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for
centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's
immortality.’’ (as cited in Brannon, 2003) And for the last fifty years, professors
have, indeed, been busy. There is even a field called ‘’The Joyce Industry’’ with
many academics, linguists, philosophers working. It is not just the enigmas and
the puzzles inserted, but it is also the impossibility between languages; translated
words and sentences do not seem to speak up for the artist. In this situation one
cannot help but think of the ‘Myth of Babel’. Did Joyce want to be an immortal
being? Did he want to be the God? If it were the case, then Joyce would be a
twisted God; instead of confounding our lips, he did confound his, almost
recreating the myth as the state of confusion in which we find ourselves. And
today if what we are doing was to construct the tower up to Joyce through
Ulysses, Joyce would weep over his work. His novel is the most original, the most
epic, and the most poetic because he created it and gave it to himself, but now he
is left without any sense. I bet he would plead for a translator.