Docente: John McCourt Insegnamento: Letteratura Inglese

Annualità: I (Studenti M-Z) Titolo e tipologia modulo: Testi e Contesti (Mod. A)

CCD/Curriculum: LCS e LCI (tutti i curricula) Semestre: I 2008

CFU: 4 Informazioni: jmccourt@units.it

Orario: Martedì 16-18 Aula B Mercoledì 11-13 Aula 11

OBIETTIVI FORMATIVI: Il modulo si propone di introdurre le principali problematiche storico-letterarie del periodo che va dal 1830 al 1950. Alcuni tra i temi di carattere generale verranno approfonditi attraverso letture critiche di testi scelti. PROGRAMMA DEL CORSO: Gli studenti devono acquisire una buona conoscenza dei vari contesti (storici, culturali, letterari) nei quali i testi scelti sono stati scritti e di un più generale conoscenza di carattere storico-letterario su idee, cultura e poetiche del Vittorianesimo e del Modernismo. La conoscenza di una rappresentativa selezione di autori dal periodo 1830 ai tempi nostri è ritenuta indispensabile. MATERIALE DIDATTICO: Victorianism Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre Charles Dickens Hard Times (fotocopia) Gli studenti dovranno leggere una serie di “extracts” da Carlyle, Newman, Tennyson, Arnold, che si trova nel volume curato da Franca Ruggieri Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo (Carocci) e da John Stuart Mill (fotocopia). Modernism W.B. Yeats (Excerpts from Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo, pp.268-281) T.S. Eliot (Excerpts from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo, pp.344-349) James Joyce, Ulysses (photocopied excerpts) Virginia Woolf (Excerpts from Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo, pp.288-303) Samuel Beckett (Excerpts from Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo, pp. 402-418) MISURE PER STUDENTI STRANIERI: Una parte delle lezioni sarà svolta in lingua inglese. NOTE / ALTRE INFORMAZIONI: Il cambio di canale è consentito ai soli fini della frequenza. Gli studenti del canale impossibilitati a seguire in modo continuativo il modulo sono tenuti a contattare il docente

o a leggere gli avvisi nella bacheca del docente stesso.

The Subjection of Women - John Stuart Mill

If it be said that the doctrine of the equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be remembered that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater, than it would have been under the other system, experience does not say. On the other hand, experience does say, that every step in improvement has been so invariably accompanied by a step made in raising the social position of women, that historians and philosophers have been led to adopt their elevation or debasement as on the whole the surest test and most correct measure of the civilisation of a people or an age. Through all the progressive period of human history, the condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not of itself prove that the assimilation must go on to complete equality; but it assuredly affords some presumption that such is the case. Neither does it avail anything to say that the nature of the two sexes adapts them to their present functions and position, and renders these appropriate to them. Standing on the ground of common sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing — the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others. It may be asserted without scruple, that no other class of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relation with their masters; for, if conquered and slave races have been, in some respects, more forcibly repressed, whatever in them has not been crushed down by an iron heel has generally been let alone, and if left with any liberty of development, it has developed itself according to its own laws; but in the case of women, a hot-house and stove cultivation has always been carried on of some of the capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their masters Then, because certain products of the general vital force sprout luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated atmosphere and under this active nurture and watering, while other shoots from the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air, with ice purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and some are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability to recognise their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind, indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they have made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not kept in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow. Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character. Whatever any portion of the human species now are, or seem to be, such, it is supposed, they have a natural tendency to be: even when the most elementary knowledge of the circumstances in which they have been placed, clearly points out the causes that made them what they are. Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his landlord is not industrious, there are people who think that the Irish are naturally idle. Because constitutions can be overthrown when the authorities appointed to execute them turn their arms against them, there are people who think the French incapable of free government. Because the Greeks cheated the Turks, and the Turks only plundered the Greeks, there are persons who think that the Turks are naturally more sincere: and because women, as is often said, care nothing about politics except their personalities, it is supposed that the general good is naturally less interesting to women than to men. History, which is now so much better understood than formerly, teaches another lesson: if only by showing the extraordinary susceptibility of human nature to external influences, and the extreme variableness of those of its manifestations which are supposed to be most universal and uniform. But in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study. Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the natural differences between the two sexes — a subject on which it is impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and correct knowledge — while almost everybody dogmatises upon it, almost all neglect and make light of the only means by which any partial insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study of the most important department of psychology, the laws of the influence of circumstances on character. For, however great and apparently ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and women might be, the evidence of there

being natural differences could only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which could not possibly be artificial — the residuum, after deducting every characteristic of either sex which can admit of being explained from education or external circumstances. The profoundest knowledge of the laws of the formation of character is indispensable to entitle anyone to affirm even that there is any difference, much more what the difference is, between the two sexes considered as moral and rational beings; and since no one, as yet, has that knowledge (for there is hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive opinion on the subject. Conjectures are all that can at present be made; conjectures more or less probable, according as more or less authorised by such knowledge as we yet have of the laws of psychology, as applied to the formation of character. Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what they are, is still in the crudest and most' incomplete state. Medical practitioners and physiologists have ascertained, to some extent, the differences in bodily constitution; and this is an important element to the psychologist: but hardly any medical practitioner is a psychologist. Respecting the mental characteristics of women; their observations are of no more worth than those of common men. It is a subject on which nothing final can be known, so long as those who alone can really know it, women themselves, have given but little testimony, and that little, mostly suborned. It is easy to know stupid women. Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties. It is only a man here and there who has any tolerable knowledge of the character even of the women of his own family. I do not mean, of their capabilities; these nobody knows, not even themselves, because most of them have never been called out. I mean their actually existing thoughts and feelings. Many a man think she perfectly understands women, because he has had amatory relations with several, perhaps with many of them. If he is a good observer, and his experience extends to quality as well as quantity, he may have learnt something of one narrow department of their nature — an important department, no doubt. But of all the rest of it, few persons are generally more ignorant, because there are few from whom it is so carefully hidden. The most favourable case which a man can generally have for studying the character of a woman, is that of his own wife: for the opportunities are greater, and the cases of complete sympathy not so unspeakably rare. And in fact, this is the source from which any knowledge worth having on the subject has, I believe, generally come. … When we further consider that to understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman; that even if he could study many women of one rank, or of one country, he would not thereby understand women of other ranks or countries; and even if he did, they are still only the women of a single period of history; we may safely assert that the knowledge which men can acquire of women, even as they have been and are, without reference to what they might be, is wretchedly imperfect and superficial, and always will be so, until women themselves have told all that they have to tell. And this time has not come; nor will it come otherwise than gradually. It is but of yesterday that women have either been qualified by literary accomplishments or permitted by society, to tell anything to the general public. As yet very few of them dare tell anything, which men, on whom their literary success depends, are unwilling to hear. Let us remember in what manner, up to a very recent time, the expression, even by a male author, of uncustomary opinions, or what are deemed eccentric feelings, usually was, and in some degree still is, received; and we may form some faint conception under what impediments a woman, who is brought up to think custom and opinion her sovereign rule, attempts to express in books anything drawn from the depths of her own nature. The greatest woman who has left writings behind her sufficient to give her an eminent rank in the literature of her country, thought it necessary to prefix as a motto to her boldest work, "Un homme peut braver l'opinion; une femme doit s'y soumettre."1 The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to men. In the case of unmarried women, much of it seems only intended to increase their chance of a husband. Many, both married and unmarried, overstep the mark, and inculcate a servility beyond what is desired or relished by any man, except the very vulgarest. But this is not so often the case as, even at a quite late period, it still was. Literary women I are becoming more free-spoken, and more willing to express their real sentiments. Unfortunately, in this country especially, they are themselves such artificial products, that their sentiments are compounded of a small element of individual observation and consciousness, and a very large one of acquired associations. This will be less and less the case, but it will remain true to a great extent, as long as social institutions do not admit the same free development of originality in women which is possible to men. When that time comes, and not before, we shall see, and not merely hear, as much as it is necessary to know of the nature of women, and the adaptation of other things to it. …

The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother. I say, is supposed to be, because, judging from acts — from the whole of the present constitution of society — one might infer that their opinion was the direct contrary. They might be supposed to think that the alleged natural vocation of women was of all things the most repugnant to their nature; insomuch that if they are free to do anything else — if any other means of living or occupation of their time and faculties, is open, which has any chance of appearing desirable to them — there will not be enough of them who will be willing to accept the condition said to be natural to them. If this is the real opinion of men in general, it would be well that it should be spoken out. I should like to hear somebody openly enunciating the doctrine (it is already implied in much that is written on the subject) — It is necessary to society that women should marry and produce children. They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is necessary to compel them." The merits of the case would then be clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slave-holders of South Carolina and Louisiana. "It is necessary that cotton and sugar should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for any wages which we choose to give. Ergo they must be compelled." An illustration still closer to the point is that of impressment. Sailors must absolutely be had to defend the country. It often happens that they will not voluntarily enlist. Therefore there must be the power of forcing them. How often has this logic been used! and, but for one flaw in it, without doubt it would have been successful up to this day. But it is open to the retort — First pay the sailors the honest value of their labour. When you have made it as well worth their while to serve you, as to work for other employers, you will have no more difficulty than others have in obtaining their services. To this there is no logical answer except "I will not": and as people are now not only ashamed, but are not desirous, to rob the labourer of his hire, impressment is no longer advocated. Those who attempt to force women into marriage by closing all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a similar retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be, that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women, as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not a sign of one's thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when one allows only Hobson's choice, "that or none." And here, I believe, is the clue to the feelings of those men, who have a real antipathy to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not lest women should be unwilling to marry, for I do not think that anyone in reality has that apprehension; but lest they should insist that marriage should be on equal conditions; lest all women of spirit and capacity should prefer doing almost anything else, not in their own eyes degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves a master, and a master too of all their earthly possessions. And truly, if this consequence were necessarily incident to marriage, I think that the apprehension would be very well founded. I agree in thinking it probable that few women, capable of anything else, would, unless under an irresistible entrainment, rendering them for the time insensible to anything but itself, choose such a lot, when any other means were open to them of filling a conventionally honourable place in life: and if men are determined that the law of marriage shall be a law of despotism, they are quite right, in point of mere policy, in leaving to women only Hobson's choice. But, in that case, all that has been done in the modern world to relax the chain on the minds of women, has been a mistake. They never should have been allowed to receive a literary education. Women who read, much more women who write, are, in the existing constitution of things, a contradiction and a disturbing element: and it was wrong to bring women up with any acquirements but those of an odalisque, or of a domestic servant.

John McCourt Extracts from Jane Eyre a. A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not -- never doubted -- that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls -- occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror -- I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode -- whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed -- and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it -- I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered. b. It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. c. "No: you must stay! I swear it -- and the oath shall be kept." "I tell you I must go!" I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? -- a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! -- I have as much soul as you, -- and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; -- it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, -- as we are!" "As we are!" repeated Mr. Rochester -- "so," he added, enclosing me in his arms. Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: "so, Jane!" "Yes, so, sir," I rejoined: "and yet not so; for you are a married man -- or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you -- to one with whom you have no sympathy -- whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you -- let me go!" "Where, Jane? To Ireland?"

d. "Did you see her face?" "Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass." "And how were they?" "Fearful and ghastly to me -- oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was a discoloured face -- it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!" "Ghosts are usually pale, Jane." "This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?" "You may." "Of the foul German spectre -- the Vampyre." "Ah! -- what did it do?" "Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them." "Afterwards?" "It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me -- she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life -- only the second time -- I became insensible from terror." "Who was with you when you revived?" "No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill, and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?" "The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must be careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough handling." "Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real: the transaction actually took place." "And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you without a tear -- without a kiss -- without a word?" "Not yet." "Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to bind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that." "Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such: I wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the mystery of that awful visitant." "And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal." "But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there -- on the carpet -- I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis, -- the veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves!" I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round me. "Thank God!" he exclaimed, "that if anything malignant did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh, to think what might have happened!" e. "You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?" What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate firmly, "I am going." "Jane!"

"Mr. Rochester!" "Withdraw, then, -- I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings -- think of me." He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope -- my love -- my life!" broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back -- walked back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair with my hand. "God bless you, my dear master!" I said. "God keep you from harm and wrong -- direct you, solace you -- reward you well for your past kindness to me." "Little Jane's love would have been my best reward," he answered; "without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love: yes -- nobly, generously." Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes; erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at once quitted the room. "Farewell!" was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, "Farewell for ever!" That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I watched her come -- watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart - "My daughter, flee temptation." "Mother, I will." So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. "It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil," thought I. I rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine: it was the visionary bride's who had melted in air. f. "My prayers are heard!" ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, ALMOST as if he loved me (I say ALMOST -- I knew the difference -- for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. "Show me, show me the path!" I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader shall judge. All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones. "What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry -

"Jane! Jane! Jane!" -- nothing more. "O God! what is it?" I gasped. I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room -- nor in the house -- nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air -- nor from under the earth -- nor from overhead. I had heard it -- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being -- a known, loved, well-remembered voice -- that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently. "I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" g. I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully is he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character -- perfect concord is the result.

THEMES AND TOPICS IN JANE EYRE 1. How does Charlotte Bronte challenge traditional views of the role of women in the novel? 2. How does Bronte challenge traditional views of marriage in the novel? 3. While writing Jane Eyre, Charlotte told her sisters, "I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself." How does she make such a “plain” heroine interesting to her readers? 4. Discuss Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman or novel of formation. 5. Discuss Jane Eyre as a Gothic novel. 6. Discuss Jane Eyre as a romance. 7. Discuss how Charlotte Bronte uses the idea of the “double” to present her characters.

8. Apart from being Rochester’s first wife, what does Bertha Mason represent in the novel? 9. The five distinct phases of the novel are each characterised by a change of location. Discuss the use of place in Jane Eyre. 10. Discuss Jane’s journey between the opposites of reason and common sense versus feeling and imagination. 11. Jane Eyre is a novel which is in favour of marriage of equality. Discuss. 12. Apart from her later search for the proper husband, much of Jane’s quest also involves the search for a mother. Discuss. 13. Jane's quest for self-fulfillment is tied to her spiritual growth. When divine love and human love prove incompatible, Jane is forced to choose between them. 14. Jane Eyre, at first, challenges the widespread Victorian concept of woman as the angel of the house or the domestic goddess.

MMOODDEERRNNIISSMM "On or about December, 1910, the world changed." -- Virginia Woolf “It is well to remember that a picture – before being a battle horse, a nude woman or some anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order” (Maurice Denis, symbolist painter) BEFORE AND AFTER

PPrree--MMooddeerrnn WWoorrlldd ((ee..gg..,, RRoommaannttiicc,, VViiccttoorriiaann PPeerriiooddss)) MMooddeerrnn WWoorrlldd ((eeaarrllyy 2200tthh cceennttuurryy))

•Order Chaos •Meaning Futility •Optimism Pessimism •Stability Instability •Progress Paralysis Faith Loss of Faith Morality/Values Collapse of Morality/Values Clear Sense of Identity Confused Sense of Identity Tradition Experiment

MMooddeerrnniissmm iinncclluuddeess aa sseett ooff ccuullttuurraall aanndd lliitteerraarryy aattttiittuuddeess aanndd//oorr pprraaccttiicceess cchhaarraacctteerriizzeedd bbyy::

aann aaccuuttee sseennssee ooff ccuullttuurraall ccrriissiiss rraaddiiccaall aammbbiigguuiittiieess aabboouutt mmooddeerrnniizzaattiioonn aa rreejjeeccttiioonn ooff oorr rraaddiiccaall ddiissccoonnttiinnuuiittyy ffrroomm ttrraaddiittiioonn tteecchhnniiccaall eexxppeerriimmeennttaattiioonn//sseellff--rreefflleexxiivviittyy aa sseennssee ooff mmaallaaiissee aanndd//oorr aalliieennaattiioonn

AA DDeeffiinniittiioonn ooff MMooddeerrnniissmm a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century.... Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: conventions of realism ... or traditional meter. Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions..... Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological

theories. Its favoured techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms." (Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms) “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old. . . . [Fiction should have] no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style. . . . Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. Anyone who has read The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or, what promises to be a far more interesting work, Ulysses . . . will have hazarded some theory of this nature as to Mr Joyce's intention. (Virginia Woolf “Modern Fiction” (1919) To move beyond the realist novel, modernist authors introduced “the radical disruption of linear flow of narrative; the frustration of conventional expectations concerning unity and coherence of plot and character and the cause and effect development thereof; the deployment of ironic and ambiguous juxtapositions to call into question the moral and philosophical meaning of literary action; the adoption of a tone of epistemological self-mockery aimed at naive pretensions of bourgeois rationality; the opposition of inward consciousness to rational, public, objective discourse; and an inclination to subjective distortion to point up the evanescence of the social world of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie (John Barth, "The Literature of Replenishment" p.68) FOCUS ON LANGUAGE

““TThhee ppooeett iiss ssoommeeoonnee wwhhoo eexxcceellss iinn hhaavviinngg aa ffeeeelliinngg ffoorr wwoorrddss,, nnoott wwoorrddss ffoorr aa ffeeeelliinngg””.. TT..SS.. EElliioott

““AA ppooeemm sshhoouulldd nnoott mmeeaann bbuutt bbee”” AArrcchhiibbaalldd MMaaccLLeeiisshh AArrss PPooeettiiccaa BBeecckkeetttt pprraaiisseedd JJooyyccee,, wwhhoossee ‘‘wwrriittiinngg iiss nnoott aabboouutt ssoommeetthhiinngg;; iitt iiss tthhaatt ssoommeetthhiinngg iittsseellff’’..

44 tteecchhnniiccaall iinnnnoovvaattiioonnss iilllluussttrraattee tthhee ccrriissiiss ooff rreepprreesseennttaattiioonn 11.. NNoonn--oobbjjeeccttiivvee ((aabbssttrraacctt)) ppaaiinnttiinngg pprreesseenntteedd ppaatttteerrnnss ooff lliinneess aanndd ccoolloouurrss oonn aa ccaannvvaass wwiitthh nnoo oosstteennssiibbllee ssuubbjjeecctt 22.. FFrreeee vveerrssee aabbaannddoonneedd ttrraaddiittiioonn vveerrssee mmeetthhooddss aanndd vviioollaatteedd ssttaannddaarrdd ssyynnttaaxx 33.. IInn nnaarrrraattiivvee tthhee ssttrreeaamm ooff ccoonnsscciioouussnneessss ppuurrppoorrtteedd ttoo rreepprreesseenntt tthhee tthhoouugghhttss ooff aann iinnddiivviidduuaall cchhaarraacctteerr wwiitthhoouutt aannyy iinntteerrvveennttiioonn ooff aa nnaarrrraattoorr ffiigguurree.. 44.. IInn tthheeaattrree,, ppllaayywwrriigghhttss bbrrookkee ddoowwnn tthhee ffoouurrtthh wwaallll.. CCoonnrraadd,, HHeeaarrtt ooff DDaarrkknneessss ““IItt iiss iimmppoossssiibbllee ttoo ccoonnvveeyy tthhee lliiffee--sseennssaattiioonn ooff aannyy ggiivveenn eeppoocchh ooff oonnee''ss eexxiisstteennccee——tthhaatt wwhhiicchh mmaakkeess iittss ttrruutthh,, iittss mmeeaanniinngg——iittss ssuubbttllee aanndd ppeenneettrraattiinngg eesssseennccee.. IItt iiss iimmppoossssiibbllee.. WWee lliivvee,, aass wwee ddrreeaamm——aalloonnee.."" YYeeaattss ""TThhee SSeeccoonndd CCoommiinngg"" ""TThhiinnggss ffaallll aappaarrtt;; tthhee cceennttrree ccaannnnoott hhoolldd;; MMeerree aannaarrcchhyy iiss lloooosseedd uuppoonn tthhee wwoorrlldd..””

T.S. ELIOT “the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” ""TThhaatt ccoorrppssee yyoouu ppllaanntteedd llaasstt yyeeaarr iinn yyoouurr ggaarrddeenn,,//HHaass iitt bbeegguunn ttoo sspprroouutt?? WWiillll iitt bblloooomm tthhiiss yyeeaarr??"" JJAAMMEESS JJOOYYCCEE:: TThhee aarrttiisstt,, lliikkee tthhee GGoodd ooff ccrreeaattiioonn,, rreemmaaiinnss wwiitthhiinn oorr bbeehhiinndd oorr bbeeyyoonndd oorr aabboovvee hhiiss hhaannddiiwwoorrkk,, iinnvviissiibbllee,, rreeffiinneedd oouutt ooff eexxiisstteennccee,, iinnddiiffffeerreenntt,, ppaarriinngg hhiiss ffiinnggeerrnnaaiillss.."" Modernism includes more than art and literature. By now it covers almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture. It happens, however, to be very much of a historical novelty. Western civilization is not the first civilization to turn around and question its own foundations, but it is the one that has gone furthest in doing so. I identify Modernism with the intensification, almost the exacerbation, of this self-critical tendency that began with the philosopher Kant. Because he was the first to criticize the means itself of criticism, I conceive of Kant as the first real Modernist. The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence. Kant used logic to establish the limits of logic, and while he withdrew much from its old jurisdiction, logic was left all the more secure in what there remained to it. The self-criticism of Modernism grows out of, but is not the same thing as, the criticism of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment criticized from the outside, the way criticism in its accepted sense does; Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized. It seems natural that this new kind of criticism should have appeared first in philosophy, which is critical by definition, but as the 18th century wore on, it entered many other fields. A more rational justification had begun to be demanded of every formal social activity, and Kantian self-criticism, which had arisen in philosophy in answer to this demand in the first place, was called on eventually to meet and interpret it in areas that lay far from philosophy. Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting -- the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment -- were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly. Manet's became the first Modernist pictures by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted. The Impressionists, in Manet's wake, abjured underpainting and glazes, to leave the eye under no doubt as to the fact that the colors they used were made of paint that came from tubes or pots. Cézanne sacrificed verisimilitude, or correctness, in order to fit his drawing and design more explicitly to the rectangular shape of the canvas. Yeats The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to its place of greatest contraction... The revelation [that] approaches will... take its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre. In other words, the world's trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and heterogeneity is now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed, but from the contrary inner gyre--which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The "rough beast" slouching toward Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker's vision of the rising sphinx is his vision of the character of the new world.

The source of several major themes in “Sailing to Byzantium” can be found in Yeats's 1925 work, A Vision (1925), in which he develops his cyclical theory of life, based in part on Yeats's understanding of the Hegelian dialectic and his reading of Blake's prophetic poetry. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” Yeats used the concept of the spiraling gyre to suggest that opposite concepts—such as youth and age, body and soul, nature and art, transient and eternal—are in fact mutually dependent upon each other. Yoked together by the gyre and the poem itself, the mutually interpenetrating opposites—thesis and antithesis—resolve in such a way as to produce a synthesis that contains a larger truth. In “Sailing to Byzantium,” the golden bird contains elements of transitory nature—namely, its music—with the transcendent qualities of timeless art. In other words, the world's trajectory along the gyre of science, democracy, and heterogeneity is now coming apart, like the frantically widening flight-path of the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science, democracy, and speed, but from the contrary inner gyre--which, presumably, opposes mysticism, primal power, and slowness to the science and democracy of the outer gyre. The "rough beast" slouching toward Bethlehem is the symbol of this new age; the speaker's vision of the rising sphinx is his vision of the character of the new world. The gyre starts at its origin and moves progressively wider in a spiral, while time adds another dimension, creating the form of the vortex or funnel. Once the gyre reaches its point of maximum expansion it then begins to narrow until it reaches its end-point which is also the origin of the new gyre. Another way of seeing the same thing, if time is not taken as being fixed in one direction, is that once the maximum is reached, the gyre begins to retrace its path in the opposite direction.

One of Yeats' theory centers on a diagram composed of two conical spirals, one situated inside the other, so that the widest part of one cone occupies the same plane as the tip of the other cone, and vice versa. Around these cones he imagined a set of spirals. Yeats claimed that this image of the gyre, a spiraling form or swirling vortex, captured contrary motions inherent within the process of history, and he divided each gyre into different regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and could also represent the phases of an individual's psychological development). Leda and the Swan If “The Second Coming” represents the end of modern history, “Leda and the Swan” represents its beginning. The “history” of Leda is that, raped by the god Zeus in the form of a swan, she laid eggs, which hatched into Clytemnestra and Helen and the war-gods Castor and Polydeuces- and thereby brought about the Trojan War which is suggested in the lines: “The broken wall, the burning roof and tower,/And Agamemnon dead”. The Trojan War the Greek Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, was kidnapped by the Trojans, so the Greeks besieged the city of Troy; after the war, Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek leader Agamemnon, had her husband murdered. Most importantly, the lasting impact of the war was thatit brought about the end of the ancient mythological era and the birth of modern history. In 1931, Yeats wrote that he chose to “symbolize the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city” because “Byzantium was the centre of European civilization and the source of its spiritual philosophy.” Byzantium represents what Yeats, in A Vision, calls “Unity of Being,” in which “religious, aesthetic and practical life were one” and art

represented “the vision of a whole people.” In A Vision, Yeats says that if he could choose to spend time in antiquity he would go to Byzantium in the 6th century. When he was in Sicily in 1924 he saw the Byzantine mosaics and long before had visited St Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna and seen the sages and saints in its walls. He hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity."

Joyce “The intellectual conditions that prevail in [Ireland] do not permit the development of individuality” (CW, 171). Ireland is poor because English laws destroyed the industries of the country, notably the woollen one; because, in the years in which the potato crop failed, the negligence of the English government left the flower of the people to die of hunger (OPCW, 119) If Joyce wished to create an image of Irish political and economic stasis and failure in Dubliners, he was also keen to draw attention to the lack of a strong, indigenous literary tradition on which he could draw and which he could carry forward. In his 1901 pamphlet “The Day of the Rabblement”, he wrote of Ireland as “A nation which never advanced so far as a miracle-play affords no literary model to the artist, and he must look abroad” (OCPW, 50). Of his favourite nineteenth century Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, he wrote of how he had “no native literary tradition to guide him”. In Stephen Hero the cultural revival is heavily criticised: “The liberty they desired for themselves was mainly a liberty of costume and vocabulary … people playing at being free (SH, 66). In Dubliners he would attempt to expose this “scarecrow of liberty” (SH, 66) by revealing a city that wore only the mask of a real capital, and by pointing to the deeper reasons for the lack of individual and collective freedom: “I am writing a series of epicleti – ten – for a paper. I have written one. I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (LI, 55). “But an esthete has a floating will, and Mr Yeats’s treacherous instinct of adaptability must be blamed for his recent association with a platform which even self-respect should have urged him to refrain. ... If an artist courts the favour of the multitude he cannot escape the contagion of its fetishism and deliberate self-deception, and if he joins in a popular movement he does so at his own risk. Therefore, the Irish Literary Theatre by its surrender to the trolls has cut itself adrift from the line of advancement” (OCPW, 51-52). The Roman, not the Sassenach, was for [Stephen] the tyrant of the islanders. (Stephen Hero) In a stupor of powerlessness he reviewed the plague of Catholicism … The spectacle of the world in thrall filled him with the fire of courage (Stephen Hero, 198). Joyce’s diagnosis of a “paralysis” at the root of many Irish problems, and of religion as a major contributing factor to this condition, provides much of the dynamic of Dubliners. This belief is set out bluntly in Stephen Hero, which he wrote in parallel with Dubliners. Here Joyce gives voice to Stephen’s “deep-seated anger”: whenever he encountered a burly black-vested priest taking a stroll of pleasant inspection through these warrens full of swarming and cringing believers he cursed the farce of Irish Catholicism: an island … the inhabitants of which entrust their wills and minds to others that they may ensure for themselves a life of spiritual paralysis, an island in which all the power and riches are in the keeping of those whose kingdom is not of this world, an island in which Caesar … confesses Christ and Christ confesses Caesar that together they may wax fat upon a starveling rabblement (Stephen Hero, 150- 151). A version of Joyce’s Catholicism is presented in A Portrait:

Sunday was dedicated to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, Mondays to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to the Guardian Angles, Wednesday to Saint Joseph, Thursday to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Friday to the Suffering Jesus, Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary (P 150). Joyce has Cranly cannily remark to Stephen Dedalus: "your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve" (P 240). The movement towards disbelief is one of the central dynamics of Joyce’s bildungsroman. Stephen’s rejection of the priesthood and his loss of faith are parallel events. They are among the central movements that take place in the fifth and final chapter of A Portrait. Firstly he rejects the priest’s invitation to join the Jesuit order, refusing “a grave and ordered and passionless life” because he has come to realise the “frail hold which so many years of order and obedience had on him”. The priest’s call is lost to him. Joyce’s sense of sin, haunting guilt, and confession, most of all for sins of the flesh, became one of the driving forces of his fiction and especially of A Portrait. The third chapter of this novel offers an indulgent mediation on the Seven Deadly Sins starting with gluttony: “Stuff it into you, his belly counselled him” and continuing with sloth: “A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul”; pride: “His pride in his own sin, his loveless awe of God, told him that his offence was too grievous to be atoned for”; anger: “The blundering answer stirred the embers of his contempt for his fellows”. Special place is kept for lust: “from the evil seed of lust all the other deadly sins had sprung forth” (P 107). Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things? His conscience sighed in answer. Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a mass of corruption (Portrait 137). Joyce’s declared intention, as he framed it in a 1906 letter to Grant Richards, was “to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis" (L II, 134). Earlier, in a 1904 letter to Constantine Curran, he announced the Dubliners project, declaring that he would “call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (L I, 55). The fifteen short stories of Dubliners each explore some sort of paralysis within life in Dublin, voiced in an economic, psychological, cultural, political key. The pattern of the stories is repetitive. An instant is created in which the protagonist may grasp at the chance of change. Inevitably the instant passes, the individual is defeated by fear, by the constrictions of his world, by the safe illusions offered by the habitual, by an inability to move or feel or, perhaps better, to feel sufficiently. The instant passes, the individual character remains with a partially understood sense of what might have been.

ULYSSES (1922)

In a year which saw such wonderful books as Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, Joyce’s dazzlingly original Ulysses was more than a first among equals. It was the novel of the year and would become the novel of the twentieth century. It was hailed by critics led by Joyce’s French sponsor Valery Larbaud, who wrote that, with Ulysses, Ireland was “making a sensational re-entrance into high European literature” and described the book as “the vastest and most human work in Europe since Rabelais”. Joyce was finally recognised as a writer of worldwide importance for what Hemingway called his “most goddamn wonderful book”. Eliot praised its unprecedented manipulation of the “constant parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity”, and there is no doubt that, with Ulysses, the novel as the nineteenth century had known it could never be the same again. Of course this recognition came slowly and was not universal; indeed, some contemporaries were openly critical. Edmund Gosse objected to it on the grounds that Joyce had been forced to publish it in Paris because of its obscenity; Virginia Woolf snootily judged it “underbred”, the work of “a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples”; George Moore wondered “how one can plow through such stuff” and George Bernard Shaw in his letter refusing to buy a copy described it as “a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation; but it is a truthful one”. Back in Ireland, The Dublin Review called it “a fearful travesty”, Joyce’s father was unimpressed and declared his son a “blackguard”, while the usually sympathetic Aunt Josephine Murray was so horrified by the parts she read that she quickly found someone to give it away to. What caused such strong reactions and why was Ulysses for so long considered a dirty book, “sordidly pornographic” to quote The Sporting Times, or, in the words of the Sunday Express, “the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature ... with its leprous and scabrous horrors”? The occasional use of strong language, and the graphic descriptions and even celebrations of all aspects (especially the excretory and sexual) of the epic of the human body, coupled with blasphemies, certainly shocked readers. But today other aspects of this “little story of a day (life)” stay with the reader: the transposition of the mythic Ulysses onto modern times and onto the shoulders of Leopold Bloom - “a cultured allroundman”; the marvellous compression of an age - of its history, politics, religion, music, science, culture, economics - into 24 hours of Dublin life; the revolutionary technical and stylistic ambition of the book in which each episode has a distinct style, voice and point of view and yet whose whole is one huge symphonic triumph. Among the great breakthroughs of his novel was the employment of the interior monologue which Joyce developed from Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupés and Artur Schnitzler’s novella Leutnant Gustl. But the interior monologue (most famously adopted in the final "Penelope" episode) was just one aspect of this endlessly complex and hugely revolutionary work. Joyce himself left a comment as to the nature and scope of his great work, in a letter to the Italian critic and translator Carlo Linati in 1920. He described Ulysses as "l'epopea di due razze (Israele-irlanda)" per poi dire "è una specie di enciclopedia, anche. La mia intenzione è di rendere il mito di Odisseo sub specie temporis nostri; non soltanto ma permettendo che ogni avventura (cioè, ogni ora, ogni organo, ogni arte connessi e immedesimati nello schema somatico del tutto) condizioni anzi crei la propria tecnica" (L, 366-367).

It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life)... It is also a kind of encyclopaedia. My intention is not only to render the myth sub specie temporis nostri but also to allow each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the somatic scheme of the whole)

to condition and even to create its own technique. (James Joyce, Letters, 21st September 1920)

My head is full of pebbles and rubbish and broken matches and bits of glass picked up 'most everywhere. The task I set myself technically in writing a book from eighteen different points of

view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen, that

and the nature of the legend chosen would be enough to upset anyone's mental balance. (Letters, 24 June 1921)

I enquired about Ulysses. Was it progressing? "I have been working hard on it all day," said Joyce. "Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said. "Two sentences," said Joyce. "You have been seeking the mot juste?" I said. "No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. There is an order in every way appropriate. I think I have it." "What are the words?" I asked. "I believe I told you," said Joyce, "that my book is a modern Odyssey. Every episode in it corresponds to an adventure of Ulysses. I am now writing the Lestrygonians episode, which corresponds to the adventure of Ulysses with the cannibals. My hero is going to lunch. But there is a seduction motive in the Odyssey, the cannibal king's daughter. Seduction appears in my book as women's silk petticoats hanging in a shop window. The words through which I express the effect of it on my hungry hero are: 'Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.' You can see for yourself in how many different ways they might be arranged." 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. (Joyce cited in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce)

Why was I always returning to this theme . . ? I find the subject of Ulysses the most human in world literature. Ulysses didn't want to go off to Troy; he knew that the official reason for the war, the dissemination of the culture of Hellas, was only a pretext for the Greek merchants, who were seeking new markets. When the

recruiting officers arrived, he happened to be plowing. He pretended to be mad. Thereupon they placed his little two-year-old son in the furrow. Observe the beauty of the motifs: the only man in Hellas who is against the war, and the father. Before Troy the heroes shed their lifeblood in vain. They want to raise the siege. Ulysses

opposes the idea. [He thinks up] the stratagem of the wooden horse. After Troy there is no further talk of Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon. Only one man is not done with; his heroic career has hardly begun: Ulysses.

"I understand that you may begin to regard the various styles of the episodes with dismay and prefer the initial style much as the wanderer did who longed for the rock of Ithaca. But in the compass of one day to compress all these wanderings and clothe them in the form of this day is for me possible only by such variation which, I beg you to believe, is not capricious." "I am writing Ithaca in the form of a mathematical catechism. All events are resolved into their cosmic physical, psychical etc. equivalents, e.g. Bloom jumping down the area, drawing water from the tap, the micturition in the garden, the cone of incense, lighted candle and statue so that not only will the reader know everything and know it in the baldest coldest way, but Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies, wanderers like the stars at which they gaze." "I am writing Ithaca in the form of a mathematical catechism. All events are resolved into their cosmic physical, psychical etc. equivalents, e.g. Bloom jumping down the area, drawing water from the tap, the micturition in the garden, the cone of incense, lighted candle and statue so that not only will the reader know everything and know it in the baldest coldest way, but Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies, wanderers like the stars at which they gaze."

Calypso MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish. The coals were reddening. Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high. -- Mkgnao! -- O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire. The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writing-table. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly, the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees. -- Milk for the pussens, he said. -- Mrkgnao! the cat cried. They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me. -- Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. -- Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly. She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor. -- Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.

In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis BEFORE NELSON'S PILLAR TRAILS SLOWED, SHUNTED, CHANGED TROLLEY,

started for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company's

timekeeper bawled them off: -- Rathgar and Terenure!

-- Come on, Sandymount Green! Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved from their

railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel. Start, Palmerston park!

The Wearer of the Crown

Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid,

for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery.

Gentlemen of the Press Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them

up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.

-- There it is Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes. -- Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the Telegraph office.

The-door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers under his cape, a

king's courier. Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in four clean

strokes. Scissors and paste. -- I'll go through the printing works, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square.

-- Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his ear, we can do him one.

Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in. We.

Sirens BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINING IMPERthnthn thnthnthn. Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more. A husky fifenote blew. Blew. Blue bloom is on the Gold pinnacled hair. A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille. Trilling, trilling: I dolores. Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold? Tink cried to bronze in pity. And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking. Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. Coin rang. Clock clacked. Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye! Jingle. Bloo. Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum. A sail! A veil awave upon the waves. Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. Horn. Hawhorn. When first he saw. Alas! Full tup. Full throb. Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring. Martha! Come! Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap. Goodgod henev erheard inall. Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. A moonlight nightcall: far: far.

I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. Cyclops I WAS JUST PASSING THE TIME OF DAY WITH OLD TROY O THE D.M.P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes.-- Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush? -- Soot's luck, says Joe. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to? -- Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders. -- What are you doing round those parts? says Joe. -- Devil a much, says I. There is a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken Lane - old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him - lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hop of my thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury street. -- Circumcised! says Joe. -- Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out of him. Ithaca WHAT PARALLEL COURSES DID BLOOM AND STEPHEN FOLLOW RETURNING?Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertance as far as the farther corner of Temple street, north: then at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends. Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary? Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glow-lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the study of medicine, the past day, the male-cent influence of the presabbath, Stephen's collapse.Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective like and unlike reactions to experience?Both were sensitive to artistic impressions musical in preference to plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence.

PENELOPE YES BECAUSE HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE THAT BEFORE AS ASK To get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting to that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathing‐suits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Iʹll never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for them go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of her to never see thy face again