William Blake’s Influence on Joyce’s Ulysses
Stephen Dedalus is a poor schoolteacher. Poor in the sense that he lives in a one-room tower and eats nothing all day, sure, but poor mainly in the sense that he is a rotten instructor.
You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
Tarentum, sir.
Very good. Well?
There was a battle, sir.
Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window. [1]
He grills his students in much the same way his first teachers drilled him; stands before them inspiring fear and boredom. He understands the schoolroom and its small miseries. The form is tried and true: the catechism, call and response. Cochrane replies automatically to Stephen's barked interrogatives but his mind is elsewhere. The window, the unknown. Our hero Stephen's sympathies lie that way too:
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess, I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and one livid final flame. What's left us then? (Joyce 20).
These are not the well-measured words of a history instructor. Actually, they're largely the words of William Blake. The "daughters of memory" figure in "A Vision of the Last Judgment", "Fable or Allegory is Form'd by the daughters of Memory." [2] Stephen muses on the figure of Pyrrhus, the Tarentenian general who won a foolish victory and died a foolish death (Gifford 30). Write faster. I mean it. Fast! The Tarentines succumbed to the Romans in the end, overcome by their greater numbers. The Battle of Asculum drained them financially. Hardly romantic stuff. But Stephen imagines ...
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...thetically (and with great enthusiasm).
[2] This connection was made by Frank Gifford in Ulysses Annotated. Maybe I ought to properly cite it later (30).
[3] I will deal with this later.
[4] This information is basically culled from the short editor's introduction to the piece on Blake in The Critical Writings of James Joyce. There is no credit, however. I'll deal with this later too. That's the kind of thing it's ok to wait until Friday to do.
[5] James Joyce. "[William Blake]". The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason, Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1959 (221). Hereafter cited parenthetically.
[6] Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Joyce was lecturing in Italian. Just a possibility.
[7] Joyce gets most of his information on Blake's life from The Real Blake by Edwin Ellis (London, 1907).
The Red Convertible, written by Louise Erdrich, is a short story written in the first person perspective of a Chippewa Indian named Lyman. It portrays the story of his brother, Henry, who joins the Marines and fights in the Vietnam War. Before recruiters pick up Henry, Lyman describes him and his brother’s road trip in their brand new red Olds. Lyman explains Henry’s characteristic during their joy-ride as friendly, joking, and fun. Returning from their road trip, Henry leaves for Vietnam. When he returns, Henry is not the same joyful man that he once was before he had left. Louise Erdrich’s short story, The Red Convertible, follows the life of Henry who is as funny joking guy. Although war has changed him, and it was not for the best. Louise Erdrich’s theme for The Red Convertible is that war can devastate peoples’ lives.
“Dubliners” by James Joyce was first published in 1914. It is a collection of short stories, which takes place in the same general area and time frame, moving from one individual’s story to the next. Boysen in “The Necropolis of Love: James Joyce’s Dubliners” discuses the way the citizens of Dublin are caught in this never ending misery because of the lack of love- mainly instituted by the “criminalization of sensual love” from the church- and the economic stress, and struggle to survive. Zack Brown goes through the individual short stories, pointing out their references to paralysis, as well as a few other themes in “Joyce’s Prophylactic Paralysis: Exposure in “Dubliners.”” “James Joyce’s usage of Diction in Representation of Irish Society in Dubliners” by Daronkolaee discuses the background knowledge of the culture and particular details of the city that enhance the understanding of the reader and enforce the ideas presented by Boysen and broken down by Brown. These analytical articles help support the idea that Joyce uses
In “The Red Convertible,” Louise Erdrich through her first- person narrator Lyman, creates an unspoken emotional bond between two brothers. This emotional bond between the brothers is not directly spoken to each other, but rather is communicated through and symbolized by “The Red Convertible.” In spite of what appears as a selfless act by one brother, in turn, causes pain in the other brother, as no feelings were communicated. In this case, Lyman explains his version as he takes us through the experiences that he and his brother Henry have with the car.
A key symbol in this story is the red convertible. The vehicle as a whole symbolizes the strong bond that was once held between the brothers. The color red has many different meanings. In some Native American cultures the color red means beauty, faith and happiness but sometimes it means blood, violence, and energy. Within the story there were two brothers that loved each other dearly. They had love for each other and everything was great between them. One day Henry lost his job and his brother Lyman had already had money saved up and they went to Winnipeg to get away and there they saw the car, the red convertible. Since both of the brothers were so close, they decided to buy the car. Both brothers loved the car just as much as they loved each other. The color of the car symbolized the love these two had for each other because the color was bright and vibrant and the car represents the strength of the actually bond between these two. After they made their trip to Alaska the car needed repairs. At the same time Henry was called to serve his country. When the car needed repairs, so did the relationship between the brothers. When Henry returned, he was not well and suffered from PTSD.
Washington Square Press. New York, New York: 1998. Seidel, Michael. James Joyce: A Short Introduction. Blackwell Publishers, Inc. Oxford, UK: 2002.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening should be seen as depicting the discontentment that comes from self-gratification rather than the glorification of delighting in one’s fantasies. Chopin describes the central idea of one who is seeking to please her personal needs and desires and, in the process, neglects to notice how her actions affect others. The protagonist, Edna, is not able to find peace or happiness in the accepted daily life that a woman of her era and social status should have. The fulfilling of her desires could essentially cause social ostracism for her, her husband, and her children, yet she is unable to find repose in living the typical social Victorian life. The final resolve of her “awakening” to her desires, her ultimate suicide, is not an honorable position that women should strive toward as a romantic ideal because her desires were hopeless in her situation. Through Edna’s striving for personal satisfaction, she loses the joys that daily life has to offer.
The relationship of brothers usually lasts forever, but in Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Red Convertible”, the relationship of the main characters Lyman and Henry takes a turn. Erdrich takes her audience through the experiences these brothers face and how they must come to terms that their relationship has changed. Knowing that it will most likely never be the same both Lyman and Henry try to fix their relationship until eventually one falls because of the experiences he faced in life. While Lyman may think the red convertible will save his and Henry’s relationship, Erdrich makes it clear that it will not through the characterization of the brothers, the plot of the story, and the symbolism she uses to tell her story.
His spiritual beliefs reached outside the boundaries of religious elites loyal to the monarchy. “He was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War” (E. P. Thompson). Concern with war and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution were displayed in much of his work. One of Blake’s most famous works is The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. In this collection, Blake illuminates the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and follow them into adulthood.... ...
Have you ever wanted to take the summer off from work and escape from reality in order to travel around the world without having any worries? Well this is what Henry and Lyman in the “Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich decided to do one summer. Henry and Lyman are two brothers who grew up on the Indian reservation. They perceive life on the reservation as an ongoing circle with a harmonious atmosphere. During their trip to Montana and Alaska Henry and Lyman’s idea of a carefree life is only reinforced, but when Henry is sent to Vietnam this perception is surpassed by a new reality and changes Henry’s reactions to the surrounding circumstances.
He based most of his works in the style of Romanticism - Blake wrote from the heart, he let his thoughts and beliefs take over.
Works Cited A Brief Biography of James Joyce. Joyce. The James Joyce Centre, 2011. Web. The Web.
Bloom, Harold. "Critical Analysis Of "The Tyger " Bloom's Major Poets: William Blake. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 2003. 17-19.
The Gale Group. "James Joyce." Literature resource center - Document Display. 2 Feb. 2000. 22 Apr. 2014.
To me, Ulysses was a necessary evil, in that I thought that I would not be able to call myself a literature student unless I had read the entire novel. While my journey through Ulysses was laden with moments of bewilderment, exasperation, and self-pity, I was able to power my way through the novel with a deeper appreciation for the way James Joyce was able to create a linear story told through a series of non-linear writing styles. In retrospect, the grueling challenge of reading Ulysses made me a better student, in that I was able to grow as a reader by adjusting myself to Joyce’s train-of-thought writing style, and that I could add Ulysses to my personal canon of academic literature.
Pope, Deborah. "The Misprision of Vision: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". James Joyce. vol.1. ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 113-19.