Joyce Voice

Connolly

English 8320/Dr. Dickey

1

Wm. Anthony Connolly

English 8320

Dr. Frances Dickey

September 24, 2008

Joyce’s Polyphonic Spree:

Voices in James Joyce’s First Three Episodes of Ulysses

James Joyce uses multiple narrative devices to exemplify how during Modernism, the period between

the first and second World War, individuality was sacrosanct, yet splintered coming to be viewed as a

mosaic, a collage perhaps, of multiple masks, influences and levels of consciousness. Joyce uses

unconventional grammatical dialogue markings; interior monologue; free indirect style/speech;

interweaves narrator and character voices, and offers up a chorus of voices in the first three episodes of

Ulysses to show how the self is heterogeneous.

From page one of Ulysses Joyce boldly claims new territory for narrative prose by forgoing the

traditional grammatical signifier the quotation mark (“speech”) to delineate when a character is

speaking. He does this by introducing dialogue with instead a dash (—), a convention modern Irish

writers like Paddy Doyle, Flan O’Brien, Anne Enright, and John Banville have adopted and continue to

use in their prose. The dash was initiated by Joyce to establish the arbitrary nature of individuality; to

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know when someone in particular is speaking in the book is both a joy and, at times, a conundrum. This

makes it difficult for some readers to determine whose voice is speaking, for in fiction readers and critics

are always first to ask – who is speaking? Joyce establishes this via the initial — as some sort of

typographical gasp of air – or of time – where the flow of information, narrative report, is either

interrupted or bookended, like the dash found between the birthdates and dead-dates of all those with

tombstones. The dash is principally an interruption, a shift in the information or focus from narrator to

character. The single utterance and speaker is easily discernible: “— Back to Barracks, he said sternly”

(9). Or, “— Now then, Mr. Deasy said, rising” (38). In the former context tells the reader the pronoun

belongs to Buck Mulligan. In the latter the speaker is clearly identified. But the dash does not always

provide clear-cut identification of a speaker. “— But a lovely mummer, he murmured to himself. Kinch,

the loveliest mummer of them all” (11), provides an example of where the reader becomes an active

part of the narrative for it is not clear who is speaking in the latter of the two sentences – it might be a

continuation of the first identification that of Buck Mulligan, since he often refers to Stephen Daedalus

as Kinch. But it could also be the narrator, for Joyce often interweaves the voice of the narrator with

that of the characters: “Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of

beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery” (36 italics mine). This

passage illustrates Joyce’s technique of interwoven voices that of narrator in third person “Stephan’s

hand, free again…” and of character in first person, “A lump in my pocket.” Here there are no dashes, no

indication of interruption.

In Joyce’s prose narrator and character co-exist and the novelist additionally invites readers in to

dialogue on whom is talking and when. “— I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here

in the dark with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther” (10)

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shows this co-existence, this abutment of narrator and character. The first three episodes, while

focalized on Stephen Dedalus is replete with this interwoven levels of focalization from narrator to that

of character. “He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open

uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He wants too hear from me” (40). In this passage readers are asked to

determine clearly where the narrator is and where the character’s conscious thoughts reside. There are

no indications that Dedalus is thinking these things representing yet another device Joyce employs –

free indirect style or speech, which I will get to momentarily. The choicest device Joyce uses to

exemplify the multiplicity of voices and consciousness is this weaving in and out of narrator and

character:

Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of

them coloured. How? By knocking the sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a

millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane.

If you put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. (42)

This passage is exemplar of this narrative/character interflow where the reader is given cues as when

then narrator is speaking by the placement of pronouns, and then the free thoughts of Dedalus without

introductory or exiting pronoun indicators. Within this interwoven interior monologue/dialogue, there

are instances of what can be described as free indirect style or speech, a word or phrase that appears to

be narrative report, but is for all intents and purposes not the words or phrase of the narrator, but that

of the character, as if the character has somehow influenced the narrator for the word. This occurs here

with the phrase, “maestro di color che sanno” which is not the tongue of the author for the text is in

English (for the most part ) and is the vocabulary of a teacher or someone who has travelled widely, as

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has Stephen Dedalus. Joyce sprinkles the first three episodes with free indirect style or speech.

“Chrysostomos,” (9) appears in mid narrative report or “pale oak” (9) for how Dedalus sees his friend

Mulligan’s hair and a page later the poet Dedalus changes it to “oakpale” (11). The poet describes his

friend’s name Malachi Mulligan as having “two dactyls,” a poetic term for meter. At the beach Dedalus

having seen a pretty girl describes the water containing, “white breasts” (15); again not indicated by

pronoun, but it comes in the middle of narrative report. Interestingly, Joyce borrows words from

Dedalus to this move, and in certain passages Joyce gives us free reign of Dedalus’ thoughts to

comprehend the volume of borrowed words and references that infuse the poet and teacher’s

own .voice:

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a

student weren’t you? Of what in the other devil’s name? Pasayenn. P.C.N., you know: physiques,

chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civent… (47)

Notice the foreign tongue, references to Egypt and Paris, and later on in the section obscure literary

references. This bricolage of thought supplies readers with a condensed illustration of this book’s

encyclopedic, discursive, of diverse cultural background, personal proclivities and public mores.

One of the wonderfully playful ways in which Joyce employs voice in these episodes is to have a

sheer variety of them both embodied and disembodied. Voices call from towers loudly (15); voices

boom from the stairhead (15); there are “preacher” voices (9) and men speak in women’s voices (15).

Voices are “puzzled” and “rasping” (19), as they are “happy foolish voices” and sometimes sounding like

“brief birdlike cries” (25). Characters are called “Steeeeeeeeeeeephen…” (26) or hear off in the distance

the “cries of voices” (41), children “raised a shout” and referee’s whistles (50). In toto, the catalogue of

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voices helps Joyce to establish the multilayered world of Dublin in the first three episodes, whose sole

author and main character are anything but alone, existing in a vortex of swirling influences, thoughts,

levels of consciousness and voices.

The final voice is that of the reader. Throughout Ulyssess the reader is asked to engage, to be in

the tower, on the beach, on the Dublin street; in the pubs with the throng and on a shore alone. To ask

each and every time a thought or word is spoken, who is speaking and if making the determination does

the reader not direct this single day ramble amongst a cadre of individuals and souls. In an era where

the author was supposed dead Joyce’s move forever gives him a presence here with an author who is

continuing providing voices, but also asking the reader questions along the way – forever an ever-

present consciousness.

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Works Cited

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Penguin Books: New York, 1977.

Documents

Joyce Voice