Book Discussion #3,4,5

FinsburyParkCarrots

Bibliobella wrote:

Ok, I'll do the research. On a point earlier noted, the link you passed along suggested the writing as stream of consciousness, and because the scenes so quickly turn that seems to make sense to me. Are you saying that his thoughts are turned into scenes, and that creates the flow affect? Scenes are thoughts primarily as opposed to experiences. In other words there is no grounding in the present. What makes this more like a poem?

The link treats the novel as a stream of consciousness, and the novel is such in that we are consistently focalised within the viewpoint of Stephen. The episodic chapters in the text share the characteristic of Stephen's intense subjectivity and the flow or confluence of internal perspective is effected by their concentration on describing the external world from within the often unreliable realm of Stephen's thought, understanding and experience. The novel is a product of scientific uncertainty and epistemological doubt: It rejects the nineteenth century model of an omniscient and obtrusively voiced construction of "the world as it is in reality", even though it still uses some realist narrative devices. It does suggest that the world can only be known from an inevitably interiorised, alienated, detached and limited human scope of being that occasionally is informed by (supernatural?) epiphany outside our conventional understanding.

When you say grounding in the present, you mean there's no temporal achrony: No voicing of the presence of the narrator outside the spatio-temporal (past tense) realm of the story? Hmm. There isn't any obvious achrony. In fact, much of the focalisation inside Stephen's perspective has a kind of tenselessness about it, or of being somehow present and past tense simultaneously the deeper inside his thoughts we go and the more third person pronouns and tense forms are left out of rendering of free indirect (becoming direct) thought. However, I would say that the fact that the novel has an organisational structure, selected around key moments of being in Stephen's advancement, points to the editorial presence of an albeit reticent narrator who makes his achronic distance known through an omniscient ability to choose what moments in Stephen's young life to explore.

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

It rejects the nineteenth century model of an omniscient and obtrusively voiced construction of "the world as it is in reality", even though it still uses some realist narrative devices. It does suggest that the world can only be known from an inevitably interiorised, alienated, detached and limited human scope . . .

However, I would say that the fact that the novel has an organisational structure, selected around key moments of being in Stephen's advancement, points to the editorial presence of an albeit reticent narrator who makes his achronic distance known through an omniscient ability to choose what moments in Stephen's young life to explore.

Yes, the interiorised viewpoint . . . that's something. Ok, I get the flow a little better, because yes, it does look like it's chronological. I only read up to the section in the link, so page 35 or so. The most solid scene is the dinner table with Dante and Mr. Casey etc. Do you find overall that Joyce excels at writing arguments? Dante seems to be just a word until that dinner conversation. And, what's with Dante and Dedalus as names?

FinsburyParkCarrots

And what makes the modernist novel more like a poem?

Perhaps, the answer is to be found in its heightened consideration of internal experience, of epiphany, of being beyond the dry epistemic structures of quasi-scientific prose discourse; its attempt to say the unsayable in language, the drives of emotion, desire, rejection of external labels of time, space and identity. Time is a theme of the modernist prose poem, it is subjective, it moves back and forth and communes with memory. Symbolism and myth are synchronous with realist descriptions of the everyday, just as you get in a poem but not in a newspaper report of, say, parliamentary proceedings.


"Which of us, in his ambitious moments, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhyme and without rhythm, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of the psyche, the prickings of consciousness? "- Baudelaire

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Symbolism and myth are synchronous with realist descriptions of the everyday, just as you get in a poem but not in a newspaper report of, say, parliamentary proceedings.

I'm sure those parliamentary proceedings are pretty righteous, though, eh? Ok, ok, point taken. What's with the names, though?

FinsburyParkCarrots

Bibliobella wrote:

Do you find overall that Joyce excels at writing arguments? Dante seems to be just a word until that dinner conversation. And, what's with Dante and Dedalus as names?

We're seeing Dante from a child's perspective. She is just a name to him before the argument.

This is important to consider. We see the world through a limited child-episteme that develops yet retains certain quirks and idiosyncrasies as the novel follows it into adulthood. Remember, Dedalus's internal impressions of wetting the bed are pleasant, as wet meant hot rather than impure; Dedalus's maintained distance from external, conventional thinking, in spite of some of his attempts to socialise with conventional "reality", is a key point of this novel.

As for the names, one must remember the poetic and symbolic force of the book. I find this link reiterates some of the points I've made in this post; it discusses symbolic/poetic motifs as organisational features of the novel:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-146,pageNum-34.html


The symbolic force of the name Dedalus will be clear by the end. Think about myth: Who was Dedalus? And what has he to do with art, or rather, crafting ingenious devices?

Ms. Haiku

Ok, I have to read more. Thanks for the help, and book suggestion, Fins!

FinsburyParkCarrots

How'd you change your name! Hey Sea! I want to be Mooney The Badger!


















Joke. :cool:

Ms. Haiku

Whoa, that's something.

Blanche

There was a German term for the narrative form of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Lebens-something, for how the novel grows the way Stephen Dedalus grows.
His narration imitates the way he is spoken to, hence Baby Tuckoo and the simple reasoning.
(This goes with the stream of consciousness argument.)

Here's something...
Dedalus: father of Icarus, built the labyrinth and the wings that were his son's demise.
Stephen Dedalus: artist in the making, lives in his own labyrinth, skirts the sun. His growth could parallel the making of the wings that will give him freedom as an adult and an artist.

Spunkie

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

We're seeing Dante from a child's perspective. She is just a name to him before the argument.

This is important to consider. We see the world through a limited child-episteme that develops yet retains certain quirks and idiosyncrasies as the novel follows it into adulthood. Remember, Dedalus's internal impressions of wetting the bed are pleasant, as wet meant hot rather than impure; Dedalus's maintained distance from external, conventional thinking, in spite of some of his attempts to socialise with conventional "reality", is a key point of this novel.

As for the names, one must remember the poetic and symbolic force of the book. I find this link reiterates some of the points I've made in this post; it discusses symbolic/poetic motifs as organisational features of the novel:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-146,pageNum-34.html

Do not the aromas, too, have an symbol/poetic motif? "He found in the end that the only odour against which his sense of smell revolted was a certain stale fishy stink like that of long-standing urine; and whenever it was possible he subjected himself to this unpleasant odour."

Ms. H... what did the research teach you?
Mr. C... why is supernatural in parenthesis with a question mark? ..curious me

Thank you for furthering my understanding with the link and discussion.

oh man... if i finish the last chapter, then the book is finished... that's the terrible thing about books... i sure hate looking forward to the end

Spunkie

I'm at Menelaus and Helen, Book IV of The Odyssey. Who else is reading this for the January discussion?

Oh MY God.... this poem is terrific... I can't thank Fins enough for suggesting this read. Thank-you.

Ms. Haiku

oh my god . . .

it's ALIVE!


I'm still on the portrait book . . .

Spunkie

Does this mean, Ms. Haiku, that you found time to read the book? (I feel excited for you!)

I googled Parnell, but did not do research into the early Ireland times. I'm asking again for a brief recap of what you learned.

Perhaps I'll go over the banter between you and Mr. C as the information was quite introspective. When discussion first commenced I hadn't yet been introduced to Stephens' friends. I did not derive much meaning out of the characters names.

Can't wait to learn more about The Odssey. I'm afraid my understanding of symbolism and metaphors is not terrific. So far, I have taken much at face value, so I am sure to be missing quite a bit.

I appreciate the insight I receive from this forum.

FinsburyParkCarrots

tish wrote:

Does this mean, Ms. Haiku, that you found time to read the book? (I feel excited for you!)

I googled Parnell, but did not do research into the early Ireland times. I'm asking again for a brief recap of what you learned.

Perhaps I'll go over the banter between you and Mr. C as the information was quite introspective. When discussion first commenced I hadn't yet been introduced to Stephens' friends. I did not derive much meaning out of the characters names.

Can't wait to learn more about The Odssey. I'm afraid my understanding of symbolism and metaphors is not terrific. So far, I have taken much at face value, so I am sure to be missing quite a bit.

I appreciate the insight I receive from this forum.

There are some good readable translations of The Odyssey. My favourite verse translation is by Richmond Lattimore but I'd say the most readable prose translation is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140445560/002-5687589-5113639?v=glance&n=283155


I hope it's okay with Kat to put up an Amazon link.

Spunkie

It was a sunny early winter day. My friend and I approached the Vancouver library, considering having a race to find one book alone, The Odyssey. The version I am reading is A New Translation by Ennis Rees. I am reading that version because of my friends' suggestion. (I was going to pick the version by weight.) Perhaps he liked the blue and yellow cover? No, it was the new translation part that he recommended.

Upon leaving the library, we saw a man on a ladder working with a tree. We joked how 1986 fun it would be if all the leaves had to be removed from the trees in autumn. Almost as fun as joking to him (on the way to the library) about a game where he would have to yell "I got shit", when he gets some! The men in suits stared at us laughing...

la la la

Spunkie

"She's still at home, all right, and patient as ever, though she
Still weeps away the miserable nights and days."
"He said it, and now it's all happeing just that way,
And a hateful wedding night will surely be forced
Upon me, accursed as I am and deprived of joy
By Zeus."
"winged words"

elmer

oh fuck...you see I have a copy of ´portrait..´and also ´ulysses´( was led to believe that ´dubliners´was the necessary starter in the build-up for ulysses) but not the Homer-tho was well aware of the link......... Furthermore I have just started Dostoyevskys´devils´, only a few pages in but once I start...... Would be handy to have this discussion for ulysses as I do get irritated if the smallest part of a novel is not clear&open to my understanding....

Spunkie

Hi Elmer! I hope you join this discussion. I know how it is though when you want to see a beginning through. Personally, I only made it halfway through Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" this summer past.

And hey.... what ever happened to the evil elf dude?

elmer

tish wrote:

Hi Elmer! I hope you join this discussion. I know how it is though when you want to see a beginning through. Personally, I only made it halfway through Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" this summer past.

And hey.... what ever happened to the evil elf dude?

.....hi to you!, well its a few years since I read "crime and punishment"but it still seems fresh.......who do you mean by the évil elf dude´? I loved the novel, for me it really was gripping.......seem to have a particular liking for russians text of the 18th, y´know tolstoy and all, they all(to me)seem to read really fluid.......but this particular guy your on about(?)...refresh me

Spunkie

Elmer, I was referring to eviltoasterelf, a book discussion participant.

eviltoasterelf, blanche... where you at with the reading? I'm trying NOT to finish The Odyssee as I love it so. Damn committments/keeping my work crap!

Oh yeah, Elmer, would you please explain what you know of Dubliners being a good reading before Ulysses? Thanks love.