v. Conclusion

In this chapter I have given a brief overview of the genres from early Irish literature echoed in Ulysses ; each argument has been schematic, and it is clear that the material could be expanded and detailed and that examples could be multiplied. Rather than belabor the point, I prefer to turn from specific correspondences to the larger question of Joyce's use of early Irish literature to challenge and redirect epic and novel, the privileged genres of English and European literature. Joyce's construction of a national epic follows the lines of Irish hero tale with its variation in style, its mixed tone, its episodic structure, its gaps, and its blurred margin. In a similar

[45] The series was later published as an independent pamphlet, which by 1908 had sold thirty thousand copies (Younger 22–27). On this aspect of the pseudohistory in Ulysses , see also R. Adams 99–106 and Manganiello 119–37, 171.

[46] Cf. Kenner, "Ulysses" 131–33, who discusses these political pseudohistorical incidents in a somewhat different vein.

fashion, Ulysses violates dominant expectations of the novel through its variation in style and mode, including the field of literary types included in the text. Joyce himself saw the style as the most significant aspect of the book, and it was this aspect of writing Ulysses that was most taxing to him.

Lawrence, in her treatment of the form of Ulysses, observes that the changing styles are the key to the violation of the reader's expectations of the genre of the novel:

The segmented quality of Ulysses —the discontinuity of the narrative as it dons various stylistic "masks"—can be treated as successive breaks in "narrative contracts" and successive rhetorical experiments rather than segments in a spatial whole. The reader of Ulysses comes to each chapter with expectations that are contingent upon what he has experienced not only in other novels but also in the preceding chapters of this one. These expectations are frustrated and altered as the book progresses. The narrative contract we form at the beginning of the book—the implicit agreement between the writer and the reader about the way the book is to be read—is broken. (6)

Lawrence continues, "The book becomes an encyclopedia of possibilities of plot as well as style, deliberately breaking the conventions of selectivity and relevance upon which most novels are based" (10).^[47] At the same time, as she argues in the second chapter of her book, before Joyce can set up this dynamic with the reader, it is essential that he establish a set of narrative expectations through the "initial style" of the first six chapters, the style Lawrence calls Joyce's "signature style."^[48]

Lawrence suggests that a way of characterizing Joyce's innovations in Ulysses is to see in them the injection of subliterary genres into the framework of the novel—genres such as catechism, journalism, magazine fiction, and so forth (10–11). This insertion of subliterary genres, she contends, is a major way in which Joyce breaks the conventions of the novel; the opening up of the novel results in a greater sense of possibilities, for it sensitizes the reader to the range of experience that overflows the conventional boundaries of the structured and causally linked rational novel (201–2). Lawrence's analysis is acute, but in light of what has been presented in the argument at hand, it may be more to the point to speak of

[47] Cf. French, esp. 54.

[48] Lawrence ch. 2. Joyce uses the phrase "initial style" in a letter to Harriet Weaver in 1919 (Letters 1: 129).

generic convention rather than style as the prime mover of the variation in Ulysses . Stylistic variation is a function of genre in the cases considered in this chapter; thus, generic multiplicity is a factor that drives much, though not all, of the stylistic change in Ulysses . As is consonant with Joyce's techniques and methods in general, Irish literature is only partially responsible for Joyce's stylistic and generic variation in Ulysses , and the Irish models converge with those from other sources. The styles in "Oxen" are clearly and ostensibly parodies of English prose styles; contemporary culture provided the journalistic signals of "Aeolus" and the prose of "Nausicaa." The form of "Nighttown" is that of drama—a genre not part of the Irish repertory at all. Nonetheless, it seems that Joyce's idea of using multiple styles, genres, forms, and modes in Ulysses can be traced to the Irish literary tradition.

A key point to consider is Joyce's complaint to Harriet Weaver: "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 1: 167). Joyce's statement that his "styles" were "unknown or undiscovered by [his] fellow tradesmen" is noteworthy. The implication is clear that Joyce's "styles" were not invented or created by him but rather known and discovered by him: known because of his familiarity with the Irish literary tradition that was at the root of his own popular culture but was marginalized elsewhere in the English-speaking world and in Europe; discovered because it was Joyce who found ways to use these "styles" effectively in modern narrative. Joyce emphasizes this implication by speaking of himself not as an artist but a "tradesman"—one who retails wares purchased elsewhere. Irish literature was not only instrumental but essential in Joyce's discovery of stylistic and generic variation and in his strategy for the reformulation of the novel.

Early Irish tales are characterized by a great deal of variation, as suggested briefly in chapter 3. There is formal variation: not only are the stories generally composed of a combination of poetry and prose, but there are two types of poetry and at least three types of prose. There is in addition an extraordinary variation in language variety and register; in any piece of early Irish literature there may be archaic language, technical language, informal or affective language, crude language or slang, and formal or ritual language, besides the unmarked narrative prose. The tex-

ture of the stories is also uneven, with, for example, radical variations in the amount of dialogue: at times narratives will suddenly open up into extended passages of dialogue, whereas elsewhere the narrative voice may predominate. Although the passages of extensive dialogue are not drama per se, they border on script and probably reflect the performance capabilities of what is basically an oral literature. Joyce exploits all these types of variation in his own narratives of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake .

In addition, a major characteristic of Irish tradition is that it includes genres that the modern definition of English literature considers "subliterary"—genres such as catalogues, placelore, genealogy, rhymed historical and genealogical verse, onomastics, precepts, history, and pseudohistory. Such genres are part of the field of early Irish literature and are integrated into much of Irish narrative per se, and Irish "subliterary" genres impinge on Ulysses over and over again as well. Thus, Joyce's narrative field in Ulysses can be seen as a modern analogue in English to the field of what is accepted as literature in Irish tradition, and this aspect of Joyce's restructuring of the novel, like the treatment of epic material considered earlier, fits comfortably in Irish tradition. Joyce's challenges to the novel in fact recapitulate many of the principles of Irish literature: he includes many styles; he embraces a wide scope of genres, narrative types, and formal structures; he has a double consciousness in his tone; and so on.

Joyce is best known for his stylistic and formal innovations; his formalism is rich and complex, and he himself was the first to acknowledge that "with me the thought is always simple" (JJ 2 476). The material presented here demonstrates that the ways in which Joyce experiments with style, genre, and form in Ulysses cannot be divorced from Irish literary tradition. It is ironic that Joyce should have challenged the privileged center of narrative—the genres of both novel and epic—in English poetics and in the dominant Western poetics using the rhetorical resources of Irish tradition, because behind his seemingly radical innovations we can see his atavistic use of an archaic literature. The placement of these stylistic innovations is significant. Though the headlines in "Aeolus" (which Joyce added late in the manuscript history) violate our stylistic expectations for the novel, the most radical departures begin with "Wandering Rocks" and the episodes that follow.^[49] "Wandering Rocks," the tenth ep-

[49] Groden (105) notes that the headlines in "Aeolus" were added in August 1921, when the book was in press. Cf. Kenner, "Ulysses " 71 n. 1.

isode of eighteen, marks the beginning of what Joyce identified as the second half of the book (Letters 1: 145, 1: 149). It is thus in the second half of the book that Joyce's formal debt to Irish literature becomes apparent, and it seems more than accidental and more than the result of Joyce's development as an artist that the book falls into two halves. Indeed, Joyce was playing with the idea of demarcating the two halves rather radically as he was finishing Ulysses , thinking of adding an "Entr'acte" (Letters 1: 149). The first half of the book fits adequately into English formal structures and with minor dislocations confirms most generic expectations of English literature; the second half incarnates the generic range and many of the narrative structures of Irish poetics. In a sense, these two halves stand for the divided literary tradition of Ireland since the Tudor conquest, as well as the divided literary tradition of an Irish author writing in English after the nationalist revival had sharpened the awareness of the importance of Irish culture in distinguishing the Irish from West Britons.^[50]

Joyce both exemplifies and reconciles his divided literary tradition in Ulysses , merging the two and in the process transcending both. Joyce's fierce attachment to English as a language as well as his disdain for certain features of the Irish literary revival are well known. But it is part of Joyce's genius to have recognized the potential of Irish form and Irish rhetoric for enriching modern narrative; to have seen the twentieth-century possibilities inherent in the genres of Irish literature, the multiplicity of styles, the comic-heroic mix, the gaps in narrative structure of the episodic heroic cycles; and to have transposed these features into English and the English literary tradition. These formal aspects of Ulysses , which have at times been read (incorrectly) as Joyce's aestheticism, also have political and nationalist dimensions: in choosing to renew Irish narrative form and myth in Ulysses , Joyce both asserts his Irishness and rejects the formal participation in English poetics chosen by most members of the Irish literary revival writing in English.

Ezra Pound proposes that technique is a test of a writer's sincerity ("Ulysses" 9). Though the writers of the Anglo-Irish literary revival use Irish content as Yeats and Synge do, or mirror Irish speech as Synge and

[50] In the Linati scheme, the division between episodes 9 and 10 is marked "Punto Centrale—Ombelico" (cf. Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey 88, appendix). The suggestion is perhaps that the two traditions descend equally from the primordial Word:"The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh" (3.37).

Gregory do, they are as a group committed to English poetics and English rhetorical resources. They employ English genres, English prosody, and English standards of narrative. While committed to the use of the resources of English as a language, Joyce breaks with English poetics in Ulysses , particularly in the second half, and thus with the poetics of his Anglo-Irish counterparts. If technique is a test of sincerity, then Joyce shows his loyalties. He writes with Irish techniques, refusing to rest content to be a West Briton in his poetics.

The Irish experience has been a colonial experience, and the colonizers of Ireland treated Irish national traditions and culture with as little regard as those of any other English colony; it has been claimed that Ireland is the only "Third World" nation of Europe. Whatever stand one takes on these questions, identification of the Irish formal and mythic elements in Ulysses suggests comparison of Joyce with twentieth-century postcolonial writers. Joyce, like such writers, was able to transform the language and poetics of English literature in part through the use of rhetorical resources, genres, formal structures, and the very conception of the role of literary practitioners derived from a literary tradition that came under the political and cultural domination of England but that continued to maintain its integrity and vitality to the twentieth century. Like many another postcolonial author, Joyce's importations from the colonized literary system are frequently misread primarily as personal invention rather than as a brilliant synthesis of two literary realms.