Literature paper

Collect questions 1 – 8 for homework.

Review the Neil Murphy Essay – 1st 5 pages

Assign readings: Readings on bb finish Murphy, and read araby 1 and 2

Movie: prostitute part or maybe later

Recap: My mind rejected the whole social order and Christianity too. The narrow minded catholic clergy and the mean spirited Irish people continually betray Ireland’s great leaders. Here was a man not at home in his home. Self imposed exile, not liked and not published. He wanted Home Rule for Ireland: British out Here was a man with a quest for a new conscience and consciousness for Ireland. Here where the pen is mightier than the sword.

The Modern Experiment: Joyce and “Epistemological” Doubt

1. Spatial versus sequential plots: characters move around in the space of their minds and memory, not in an orderly physical sequence. This creates repetition of ideas, concepts and words and a sense of disconnected or disjointed time in the pieces. Playing with the concept of time is relevant to the concept of certainty which epistomoligical doubt calls upon: the emphasis in these stories is on doubt rather than certainty, so this is Descartes concept of uncertainty as truth rather than truth that 2 +2 = 4. Time in these stories expands in disorderly ways bc they are about the internal clocking of the way the mind works as it is thinking, not the way the physical world of time is lived. Psychological time versus actual time. This is partly why these are not realistic stories- they are not concerned with real time or the physical workings of real life as they are with the concept of doubt and uncertainty. You will find evidence of this as you see the characters wandering in their thoughts to the pasts frequenctly yet not in any order and by the use of repetitive words, or word play/puns or similar words, words that reappear throughout the story but are not connected by similar plot elements, and by symbolic words. Disrupting a sense of orderly, progressive time in search of a timing more akin to how the internal mind, the psychology of thought works.

2. Quest for selfhood replaces traditional quest narratives that demonstrate courtly love, redemption, honor and represented by material things or items.

3. Uncertain endings or parallel endings: does not mean there is no meaning, only that there is more than one meaning ie many many meanings – stories may have ironies or inconsistencies which keep them from being an organized or unified whole as in this is the definite ending of this story ( deconstruction).

4. Character’s epiphanies ( Joyce invented this literary concept by the way) do not provide clarity. Ex: These are not stories with characters who move from being blind to seeing based on some clear event in the story that is also obviously seen by readers, and the knowledge gained is obvious to reader and character. Modern characters have epiphanies, huge spiritual turning points, but as to the logic of what they learn from them, this is unclear from the texts.

5. Frailty of all narrators / characters through self-effacement– not strong declarative characters who know things but rather very vulnerable, weak, sensitive, and detached narrators – self-effacing narrator The temporal and psychological distance between the narrating I and the experiencing Keeping oneself in the background: person in the background while the experience of that person in the foreground.

6. Catholic Religion: as a dominant background fabric that helps synchronize the characters in relation to one another: Christian brothers school to Mangan’s sister’s convent school, to priests and nuns and saints, and pictures of them, to what clergy own or read or do, to iconography of religious symbols as connected to narrators and characters, to chalices and salvers: body and blood of Christ, and silent churchalls and ringing bells, to the images of praying hands, or ritual of saying prayers, to the consequences and threats and fear of sinning, to the laws that govern theology (allusions to the 10 commandments or chapters from the bible) or doing the wrong thing. Catholic dogma is always near and close by and used to demonstrate instances of decay, waste and an inability of the narrators to act quickly or decidedly.