From Flights of Telos to Cycles of Nostos in the Labyrinth of James Joyce
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Authors
Kennedy, Kristopher
Issue Date
2023-05-04
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
University of the South , English Department , English Honors Thesis 2023 , James Joyce , English , Ulysses , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , Dubliners , Modernism , Daedalus
Alternative Title
Abstract
On June 16, 1904, Stephen Dedalus has returned to the labyrinth of Dublin and his past, and is haunted by the world of linear, well-ordered history that confronts him and moves towards a single goal. On this day, Stephen is depressed, wandering wayward, and belligerently drunk, and it gets him punched in the face. But he emerges from his catatonia to commune with Leopold Bloom, and perhaps their meeting marks a meaningful ending for James Joyce’s Ulysses to move towards. However, as the two men meet, Joyce thwarts this hope for a satisfying narrative telos. Instead, Bloom stands in as a model of acceptance and equanimity within the labyrinth, understanding its nature as a space of cyclical returns. Bloom accepts the past, and he builds his home in the labyrinth instead of trying to fly from it, providing an alternative to the prideful, flight-based notions of teleological escape prized by Stephen as a young man. This Joycean labyrinth is characterized by cycles of return and paradoxical time where past, present, and future commingle, and this anti-teleological aesthetic encompasses Joyce’s work from Dubliners to A Portrait to Ulysses. Joyce does not progress along lines of increasing Modernism, as critics have traditionally interpreted, but repeats in each work the very cycles of repetition and return that define his labyrinth.
Description
Citation
Publisher
University of the South