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COMPARATIVE LITERATUREOMPARATIVE LITERATURE
progressive disintegration of history is a quality of saigesse on the part of the
individual.
Archembault concludes
by
ranging
medieval
chroniclers into two distinct
categories.
Villehardouin, Joinville,
Basin,
and
Commynes,
the transcendental-
ists,
have
in
common
a sense of
time as
duration,
a
philosophy
of historical
process
and of
historical
complexity;
their works
serve
a
political
or moral
purpose.
Froissart,
Chastellain,
and La
Marche,
on
the other
hand,
are termed
phenomenalists.
Theirs is a linear
sense
of
time;
their
characters
do
not
evolve;
they
lack a
vision
of
historical
process; they
are
sensitive
to external
detail,
to
visual
beauty;
and
they
write for art and
glory.
If I
have
taken
pains
to
summarize Seven French
Chroniclers
chapter
by
chapter, it is in tribute to the author's seriousness and originality. This rather brief
volume
is
dense
in
ideas,
yet
clear
in
expository
style
and
structure.
Archambault
is
to
be
thanked,
first of
all,
for
demolishing myths
or
idees
recues:
old
notions
that
Villehardouin
and
Joinville
are
honest,
simple,
naive, and, therefore,
typically
medieval
storytellers;
or
that
Commynes
is no less
typically modern,
indeed the first
modern mind.
In
addition,
borrowing
both
from
the
space-time
configurations
of
Georges
Poulet
and
the
concern
for
mediavel
mentalites
of
the
new
historians
(Duby,
Le
Goff,
et
al.),
he
investigates
the inner
mind,
the
con-
sciousness,
of
figures
as
disparate
as
Joinville,
Froissart,
and
Commynes.
Not
only
does
Archambault reveal to us the
fascinating
Thomas
Basin;
on the
old,
tried and true
figures
he
always
has
something
new to
say
and
forces
us
to rethink
our attitudes
toward medieval
historiography
as a
whole.
It is
possible
that not all readers will be
convinced
by
Archambault's
associ-
ation
of the
phenomenalists
and transcendentalists to the
two
main
schools
of
medieval
philosophy,
the
nominalists
and
realists,
and
to
the Homeric and
biblical
literary
styles
posited
in Auerbach's Mimesis. Others
will continue
to
accept
Jean
Dufournet's
massive, highly
documented
interpretation
of
Commynes
the
destroyer
of
myths
in
preference
to Archambault's more conservative
estimate.
I am a little disturbed
by
what I
(perhaps falsely)
assume
to
be an
implicit preference
on
Archambault's
part
for Basin
and
Commynes
over
the
phenomenalists.
Froissart too
is
a
great
writer,
with his
own, unique,
unfor-
gettable vision and literary world. Perhaps Froissart's secret can be brought to
light by
relating
him to the tradition of medieval
romance
and narrative
allegory.
After
all,
he was also a
major
imaginative
poet,
the
disciple
of Guillaume
de
Machaut
in
his
dits and the author of Meliador.
These remarks
are not
meant
in
any way
to
denigrate
Archambault's
book.
Other
interpretations
than
his are
possible,
and more work
always
remains to be
done.
But
what
Archambault has done is well
done. As it stands
Seven
French
Chroniclers
is an
important
contribution to our field.
No
one
working
on
the
medieval
French historians
can afford to
neglect
it.
WILLIAM
CALIN
University
of Oregon
JAMES
JOYCE
AND
POETIC DENTITY:A REVIEW
OF
The Exile
of
James
Joyce.
By
Helene Cixous.
Translated
by
Sally
A.
J.
Purcell.
New
York:
David Lewis
1972,
756
p.
The
Exile
of
James
Joyce
is
an ambitious
work.
It
is first
an
introduction
to
Joyce-a
chronological
study
of
the interrelations
among
his
private
life
and
184
progressive disintegration of history is a quality of saigesse on the part of the
individual.
Archembault concludes
by
ranging
medieval
chroniclers into two distinct
categories.
Villehardouin, Joinville,
Basin,
and
Commynes,
the transcendental-
ists,
have
in
common
a sense of
time as
duration,
a
philosophy
of historical
process
and of
historical
complexity;
their works
serve
a
political
or moral
purpose.
Froissart,
Chastellain,
and La
Marche,
on
the other
hand,
are termed
phenomenalists.
Theirs is a linear
sense
of
time;
their
characters
do
not
evolve;
they
lack a
vision
of
historical
process; they
are
sensitive
to external
detail,
to
visual
beauty;
and
they
write for art and
glory.
If I
have
taken
pains
to
summarize Seven French
Chroniclers
chapter
by
chapter, it is in tribute to the author's seriousness and originality. This rather brief
volume
is
dense
in
ideas,
yet
clear
in
expository
style
and
structure.
Archambault
is
to
be
thanked,
first of
all,
for
demolishing myths
or
idees
recues:
old
notions
that
Villehardouin
and
Joinville
are
honest,
simple,
naive, and, therefore,
typically
medieval
storytellers;
or
that
Commynes
is no less
typically modern,
indeed the first
modern mind.
In
addition,
borrowing
both
from
the
space-time
configurations
of
Georges
Poulet
and
the
concern
for
mediavel
mentalites
of
the
new
historians
(Duby,
Le
Goff,
et
al.),
he
investigates
the inner
mind,
the
con-
sciousness,
of
figures
as
disparate
as
Joinville,
Froissart,
and
Commynes.
Not
only
does
Archambault reveal to us the
fascinating
Thomas
Basin;
on the
old,
tried and true
figures
he
always
has
something
new to
say
and
forces
us
to rethink
our attitudes
toward medieval
historiography
as a
whole.
It is
possible
that not all readers will be
convinced
by
Archambault's
associ-
ation
of the
phenomenalists
and transcendentalists to the
two
main
schools
of
medieval
philosophy,
the
nominalists
and
realists,
and
to
the Homeric and
biblical
literary
styles
posited
in Auerbach's Mimesis. Others
will continue
to
accept
Jean
Dufournet's
massive, highly
documented
interpretation
of
Commynes
the
destroyer
of
myths
in
preference
to Archambault's more conservative
estimate.
I am a little disturbed
by
what I
(perhaps falsely)
assume
to
be an
implicit preference
on
Archambault's
part
for Basin
and
Commynes
over
the
phenomenalists.
Froissart too
is
a
great
writer,
with his
own, unique,
unfor-
gettable vision and literary world. Perhaps Froissart's secret can be brought to
light by
relating
him to the tradition of medieval
romance
and narrative
allegory.
After
all,
he was also a
major
imaginative
poet,
the
disciple
of Guillaume
de
Machaut
in
his
dits and the author of Meliador.
These remarks
are not
meant
in
any way
to
denigrate
Archambault's
book.
Other
interpretations
than
his are
possible,
and more work
always
remains to be
done.
But
what
Archambault has done is well
done. As it stands
Seven
French
Chroniclers
is an
important
contribution to our field.
No
one
working
on
the
medieval
French historians
can afford to
neglect
it.
WILLIAM
CALIN
University
of Oregon
JAMES
JOYCE
AND
POETIC DENTITY:A REVIEW
OF
The Exile
of
James
Joyce.
By
Helene Cixous.
Translated
by
Sally
A.
J.
Purcell.
New
York:
David Lewis
1972,
756
p.
The
Exile
of
James
Joyce
is
an ambitious
work.
It
is first
an
introduction
to
Joyce-a
chronological
study
of
the interrelations
among
his
private
life
and
184
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http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp -
8/10/2019 5p Review Jj
3/6
BOOK REVIEWS
intellectual development, his oeuvre, and the sociopolitical situations of his time.
It
is also
a
highly
consistent
interpretation
of
Joyce-as-Poet,
one
which
usually
breaks
through
the mass of
conventional
attitudes
that have accumulated
in
Joycean
criticism. Cixous
develops
two
of
Joyce's
stated
relationships
with other
writers:
his
early
claim to be a
Marxist
and
his view
of
Aristotle
as a more
insight-
ful
and
influential
philosopher
than
any
modern. Cixous
uses
an
integration
of
Marxist
and
Aristotelian
perspectives
as an
inroad to
Joyce,
with considerable
success.
Joyce
was
profoundly
influenced
by
Aristotle's
concept
of
teleological
necessity.
In Aristotle's
conception,
the
human
begins
life
in a
purely
passive
potentiality-
he
contains a
mass
of
possible
actions
which
imply
different
possible
identities. To
act
consistently
is to actualize a set of
potential
actions, and so to actualize one of
the
selve's
potential
identities.
With
hindsight,
one
can define
a
present,
actualized
identity
as
the
sole
necessary one,
and define
the
unrealized,
erstwhile
alternative
identities
as
impossibles.
For Cixous as well as
for
Joyce,
it
is
crucially
im-
portant
that Aristotelian determinism
(necessity)
is,
like Marxist
determinism,
ex
post facto.
It is
only
after consistent
actions have been
made,
after
an
identity
has
been
thereby
realized,
that
we
may
call those
actions
and that
identity
neces-
sary,
and call
the
unrealized,
alternate identities
impossible.
Before
action,
we
may recognize
certain
potential
actions
and identities
as
being
more
probable
than
others,
but we cannot
regard
any
as
inherently
impossible.
At
any starting
point,
all
one's
potential
actions
and
identities
are
equally possible.
Joyce,
an
exceptionally
versatile
man
with
many
potential
identities-musician,
heretic,
priest, orator, political savior, poet-regarded
Aristotelian
teleology
as
highly
relevant to
his
own life. Cixous reflects
this
relevance
on the critical
level
by giving
her work
a
teleological organization:
she
studies
Joyce
in
relation to his
necessary
vocation,
Poet.
Making
use of
biographies, Joyce's
letters,
notebooks,
and
literary works,
she
develops
a
psychophenomenology
of
Joyce's gradually
actualized
poetic
identity.
She shows
that
Joyce's
poetic,
dis-
cursive,
and behavioral acts
are at
once:
(1) gradual
reinforcements
of
the
identity
Joyce
as
poet -the identity
which
we
may
now consider
to
be the
historically
inevitable one
for
Joyce-and (2)
diverse
denials of his
many
other
potential
identities.
Cixous
maintains that
Joyce's
fascination
with
Aristotle becomes
a
source
of
tremendous
anxiety
and
despair. Joyce
was haunted
by
the
following consequence
of Aristotelian
teleology: fully
to actualize one
possible
identity
is to
deny many
others.
The actualization of one
potential
self is
narrowing,
for
it
transforms one's
other
potential
selves into
impossibles. Throughout
his
productive years,
Joyce
is
both
totally
committed to the
poet's
vocation
and
painfully
aware
that
to
be a
poet
is not
to
be
a
complete musician,
patriot, lover, priest.
Cixous' central
argu-
ment is that
until
the
end of
his
life
Joyce's
self-awareness
remains
essentially
negative.
With the
achievement
of
new
creative
works,
to
perceive
himself
as a
poet
is
primarily
to
perceive
himself as alienated from
his
other selves.
In
order
to combat his own tendency to perceive his poetic identity negatively, Joyce
develops
cunningly defensive,
heuristic
assumptions
which
enable
him
temporarily
(for
the
duration
of a
new
composition)
to
regard
his
poetic creativity
as
a
purely
positive,
actualizing
process.
The Exile
of
James
Joyce
is a careful
study
of
the
different,
increasingly
sophisticated
defenses which
Joyce
needed in
order
to
create.
Cixous'
title
refers to
Joyce's
most basic
defense,
the stance
of Poet
in
Exile.
Because
of his
extreme
concentration
on
his own
poetry,
Joyce
becomes alienated
185
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COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
from
his
potential self,
from his
dream of
himself as
Ireland's
political
savior.
Joyce
transforms this alienation into
an
external
phenomenon,
and
plays
the
role
of
Irish exile. The
valuable
consequence
of
this role
is that
Joyce
does not
betray
enslaved
Ireland;
narrow-minded Ireland
foolishly
betrays
him.
So
alienation,
originally
a
self-inflicted
curse,
becomes
for
Joyce
a
cultivated
value,
a
mark
of
the
being
who
is
persecuted
because
of
his
superiority. (Joyce's
self-determined
stance,
the
exile,
is
interesting
in
that
it
provides
a
general
context
for a
type
of
behavior which
Ellmann
underscores
in
his
biography
of
Joyce: Joyce's
recurrent
tendency
to
interpret ostensibly
neutral situations
as
martyrdoms
and
perse-
cutions.)
However,
the
necessary construct,
the
exile,
is tenuous and
obviously
self-
deceptive. Joyce develops more subtly defensive forms for it, forms which allow
him
a
more
convincing
positive conception
of himself as
poet.
One
such
compli-
cated
defense:
Joyce
often reworks the
myths
and
dogmas
central
to
his
forsaken
identities into aesthetic
theories,
thereby
making
it seem
that
the
identity
Poet
is
larger
than,
and able
to
contain,
those
other forsaken
identities.
Joyce's
secular
recasting
of the
felix
culpa
doctrine both
represents
this defense and
develops
another.
The
fortunate fall is the
individual's
deliberate
rupture
with
the safe
identities
given by
church, nation, language;
the
rupture
allows
the
individual to
be
self-determining,
the artist of
his
own
life.
Joyce's
ability
to
transvaluate
alienation, then,
takes the
general
form
of
an
exile
complex.
For one so
painfully
aware that full
commitment to the
identity
Poet involves a denial of all other potential identities, exile is necessary; exile
justifies poetic activity.
To be
merely
an innocent
poet
is
still
to
reject
one's
potential
selves,
but to
be an
innocent
exiled
poet
is
to be
rejected.
Done
in
exile,
poetic activity
is
primarily self-sustaining,
not
self-destructive.
Cixous
claims
that
it
is
not
until
Joyce
extends
his defensive
exile
complex
to
his
relation with
the
English language
that
he is
able to
resolve
his Aristotelian dilemma in a
permanently satisfying
way,
and to
move
beyond
the
reactionary
pitfalls
of
his
earlier defenses.
That
Joyce's
alienation
from
English
(his
native
language,
yet
historically
a
language imposed
upon
Ireland
by
her
oppressors)
becomes,
paradoxically,
the
source
of
his
poetic power
is
a
commonplace
of
Joycean
criticism.
However, pre-
vious
critical
explanations
of the
relation
between
Joyce's
alienation
from
English
and
his
poetic
control of
English
are
usually
circular: because
a
poet (linguisti-
cally
sensitive), Joyce
resents
that his
native
language
is
also alien
(the language
of
oppressors);
he
resolves
this
problem
by
becoming
a
poet
(one
who has
detached control
of
his
native
language). Cixous,
by
discussing
Joyce's
exile
from
language
as
a
particular
case
of
his
defensive construct
Exile,
is
able
to
give
a more
penetrating analysis
of
Joyce's
linguistic
skill.
More
is
involved
in
Joyce's
linguistic
skill than
a
detached control
of
language.
For
one
who
strongly imagines
himself exiled within
his
language,
mere
poetic
control can
only
be
a
temporary
solace.
So,
his
sense
of
linguistic
exile
leads
Joyce
to
reconceptualize
language
itself.
Joyce develops
a
concept
of
language strikingly
similar
to
that
of a
contempo-
rary,
Walter
Benjamin:
different national
languages
are
equivalent
to
actualized
(hence
limiting)
universes;
however,
national
languages
arise
from
Language,
the human
power
of
articulation,
which
is an
ultimately
real,
infinitely
potential
universe,
containing
all
humanly possible
modes
and
categories
of
thought.
This
concept
of
language
as
an
infinite
universe
in which
categories
of
thought
are
never
inevitably
fixed
allows
Joyce
to resolve
his
Aristotelian
dilemma.
Although
186
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BOOK
REVIEWS
commitment to one identity, the Poet, at first necessarily closes access to one's
other
potential
selves,
through
poetic
commitment
to
language
one rediscovers
all
potentiality.
The
poet
discovers
a
universe
in
which
all
potential
acts
and
identi-
ties
are
once
again
open, possible
forms
.
Cixous'
analysis
allows
her
to
characterize the source
of
Joyce's linguistic
power
quite
clearly. Referring
to
the
Scylla
and
Charybdis
chapter
in
Ulysses,
she observes
that The
matter
of
the
experience
is
communicated
in
a
language
which is itself the
illustration
and
the
explicit
judgment
of
that
experience.
Because
he is a
conventionally good poet
with detached
control over
linguistic
effects,
Joyce
is
able
fully
to manifest
( illustrate )
an
experience
in
language.
Because
Joyce
also
views
language
as
an
infinite universe
of
thought,
he
is
able
simultaneously to judge that experience linguistically. (This dual power is dif-
ferent
from
connotation,
ambiguity,
and semantic
tension;
it
is
the
complete
linguistic
actualization
of
irony.)
The
Exile
of
James
Joyce
is a
valuable
book,
relevant
beyond
the
specialized
sphere
of
Joycean
criticism. It
is
therefore
regrettable
that Cixous'
conclusion
is
much
weaker
than the
text
which
precedes
it.
The
conclusion,
a
conventional
general
appraisal
of
Joyce
and
his
work,
is
a
narrowing
distortion of
Cixous'
more
interesting
hypotheses
and
insights.
This
qualitative
lapse
seems
clearly
due
to a
conflict between Cixous'
theoretical and
practical
criticisms.
For
the
body
of
her
work,
Cixous' subtle
integration
of
Marxist
and Aristotelian
constructs
func-
tions
as
a
powerful
critical
method;
it
allows for
both
implicit
evaluation and
interpretive integrity. However,
Cixous bases
her
concluding,
explicit
evaluation
upon
a
seemingly
a
priori
commitment
to
Marx and
Aristotle,
to
the detriment
both
of
Joyce
and of her
preceding speculative interpretation
of
him.
Cixous
finds fault with
Joyce's
linguistic
resolution
of
his
Aristotelian
dilemma,
claiming
that his
concept
of
language
as the
universe
of
open
possibilities
is
a
formal
resolution
but an ethical
evasion. With
Finnegans
Wake,
she
contends,
Joyce merely negates
Aristotle's
concept
of
teleological
necessity. Finnegans
Wake
is
an
irresponsibly
infinite
work, generated by
a
paranoid
fear
of
fixed,
exclusive,
actualized
form:
The need to
speak,
to
hear
the
spoken
word with
the
assurance
that
he
was
alive-to
say merely
'I
am
he
who writes'-was
what drove
Joyce
to
seek out and invent a kind of writing that would not stop its evolution and
development
once the writer
had left
it,
which
would
continue
developing
be-
cause
it
contained
an
infinite
supply
of
meanings.
This
evaluation,
based
on
a
clever but
overly
pat
application
of
Aristotle to
Joyce,
is
itself
a
kind
of
Aristotelian
reversal. As
we read The
Exile
of
James
Joyce,
its
plot
line
seems
to be
tracing
Joyce's painful,
gradual
actualization
of the
poetic identity.
At
the
end
of
the
work,
we are
suddenly
asked to
realize that
Joyce
never
authentically
actualizes
his
identity;
that
Joyce
evades
his
problem by retreating
into the
infinite
realm
of
purely
passive
potentiality (language).
In
her
conclusion,
Cixous
ignores
the
fact
that,
according
to
Aristotle,
one
can
only
trace
a work's
necessary teleology
retroactively,
after
one
has
fully
compre-
hended the work's own last moment. Joyce's last moment as poet is Finnegans
Wake;
a
thorough
autonomous
comprehension
of
Finnegans
Wake
must
precede
an
attempt
to retraverse
chronologically
the
earlier
poetry.
Such
an
approach
is
particularly
crucial
for a
study
of
Joyce, who,
as his notebooks
reveal,
conceived
of each new work
as the
containing
and
transcending
form for the
previous
ones.
Cixous
does
not
give Finnegans
Wake
her
close
critical
attention
(save
in
her
brief
appendix)
;
she reads
it
only
in
terms
of
Joyce's
earlier
works.
Hence,
her
study
also
ignores
the
fact
that
Aristotle
is a
major
figure
in
Finnegans
Wake,
and
187
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COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
OMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
that his endorsement of the probable impossible (an alternative to actualized,
necessary
history)
is
therein
explicitly
seconded
by Joyce,
and
carefully
extended
beyond
aesthetics
to
ethics.
Moreover,
Cixous' conclusion
ignores
her
own
per-
ceptive
refutation
(early
in
Exile)
of the
view
that
Joyce
is
a
symboliste,
that
he
attempts
to create
infinitely suggestive
and elusive
literature.
(I
should
note that
Cixous
does
try,
albeit
unsuccessfully,
to
overcome
this
particular contradiction.)
A
priori
Marxism leads
Cixous
to
mistake
Joyce's
linguistic
stance
for
an
arrogant
escape
from
particularity,
a
cynical
disdain for the
historically
concrete.
This
appraisal
is odd
in that it
overlooks
a
basic
feature of
Finnegans
Wake,
namely
the
radically
referential
aspect
of that
work.
In
Finnegans
Wake
Joyce
refers
constantly
to
specific
situations
in
Irish
history
in
particular,
world
history
in general. Precise reference in Finnegans Wake always functions to supplement
Joyce's speculation
on
the
possible.
At each
point,
the
effect
is twofold: historical
reference concretizes
speculation;
speculation opens
and
evaluates
its historical
referent,
seeking
a
fuller
human
form
potential
to it.
Cixous'
sympathy
with
Marxism
prevents
her
from
seeing Joyce's
own.
By
the
time
he
wrote
Finnegans
Wake,
Joyce
had
incorporated
his
understanding
of
Marx's
insights
into
his own
poetics,
primarily
into his
notion,
the Ideal
Reader.
This
figure
is not an elitist
intellectual,
but
a
potentially
infinite
number of
active,
idiosyncratic,
independent
readers who conceive
of the absolute
in
human,
mundane
terms. The
quality
of
Finnegans
Wake
which disturbs
Cixous-its existence
as
the Book that
would
remain
alive,
ever-changing, moving,
ageing,
never
fixed
on the
page -
relates more to
Joyce's
view
of
his
readers
than
to a
personal
desire
for
infinity.
Joyce
thought
of
Finnegans
Wake
as
a
partnership,
a
joint
act
of
reciprocal
imaginative
love
and
wit,
between
himself
and the Ideal Reader
(however
many
He
be).
I
do not want to
overemphasize
Cixous' conclusion.
She
provides
in the
body
of
her
work
much
original
material which
leads the active
reader
to
other,
more
consistently
original
evaluations
of
Joyce.
Indeed,
The Exile
of
James
Joyce
could have
a
highly
beneficial
impact
upon
present
criticism
of
Finnegans
Wake.
For
despite
Cixous'
own silence
on
that work's
referentiality,
her
study
of
Joyce's
language
is
a
valuable
starting
point
for
a fuller
comprehension
of his
ability
to
integrate referential and contextual poetic meaning-an integration operative in
Finnegans
Wake.
DENISE
E.
BLUE
University
of
California,
rvine
THE
BATTLE
OFTHE
BOURGEOIS:HE NOVEL
N
FRANCE,
1789-1848.
By
Priscilla
P.
Clark.
Paris:
Didier,
1973.
219
p.
The
primary
focus
of this
study
is
the
bourgeois
in French
fiction
between
1789
and
1848.
Equally
important
is
its
methodology:
it
attempts
a
sociological
approach
to literary problems. Clark aims at a middle range theory, not the comprehen-
sive
interpretations
of
the
grand theoreticians,
not
analyses
of
individual
works,
not
compilations
of data without
explanation
but rather some sort
of
limited
generalisations
which,
because
of
their
modesty,
will
be
more
solidly
established.
The works
of
Lukacs and
Girard
exemplify,
in her
view,
such
middle-range
theories
but
she dismisses
them
as
almost
entirely
formal.
By implication,
her
own work
will
emphasize
content. A
third,
closely
related aim
is
to
explore
the
critical
commonplace
whereby
the
novel
is
a
bourgeois genre.
Clark's
initial
hy-
188
that his endorsement of the probable impossible (an alternative to actualized,
necessary
history)
is
therein
explicitly
seconded
by Joyce,
and
carefully
extended
beyond
aesthetics
to
ethics.
Moreover,
Cixous' conclusion
ignores
her
own
per-
ceptive
refutation
(early
in
Exile)
of the
view
that
Joyce
is
a
symboliste,
that
he
attempts
to create
infinitely suggestive
and elusive
literature.
(I
should
note that
Cixous
does
try,
albeit
unsuccessfully,
to
overcome
this
particular contradiction.)
A
priori
Marxism leads
Cixous
to
mistake
Joyce's
linguistic
stance
for
an
arrogant
escape
from
particularity,
a
cynical
disdain for the
historically
concrete.
This
appraisal
is odd
in that it
overlooks
a
basic
feature of
Finnegans
Wake,
namely
the
radically
referential
aspect
of that
work.
In
Finnegans
Wake
Joyce
refers
constantly
to
specific
situations
in
Irish
history
in
particular,
world
history
in general. Precise reference in Finnegans Wake always functions to supplement
Joyce's speculation
on
the
possible.
At each
point,
the
effect
is twofold: historical
reference concretizes
speculation;
speculation opens
and
evaluates
its historical
referent,
seeking
a
fuller
human
form
potential
to it.
Cixous'
sympathy
with
Marxism
prevents
her
from
seeing Joyce's
own.
By
the
time
he
wrote
Finnegans
Wake,
Joyce
had
incorporated
his
understanding
of
Marx's
insights
into
his own
poetics,
primarily
into his
notion,
the Ideal
Reader.
This
figure
is not an elitist
intellectual,
but
a
potentially
infinite
number of
active,
idiosyncratic,
independent
readers who conceive
of the absolute
in
human,
mundane
terms. The
quality
of
Finnegans
Wake
which disturbs
Cixous-its existence
as
the Book that
would
remain
alive,
ever-changing, moving,
ageing,
never
fixed
on the
page -
relates more to
Joyce's
view
of
his
readers
than
to a
personal
desire
for
infinity.
Joyce
thought
of
Finnegans
Wake
as
a
partnership,
a
joint
act
of
reciprocal
imaginative
love
and
wit,
between
himself
and the Ideal Reader
(however
many
He
be).
I
do not want to
overemphasize
Cixous' conclusion.
She
provides
in the
body
of
her
work
much
original
material which
leads the active
reader
to
other,
more
consistently
original
evaluations
of
Joyce.
Indeed,
The Exile
of
James
Joyce
could have
a
highly
beneficial
impact
upon
present
criticism
of
Finnegans
Wake.
For
despite
Cixous'
own silence
on
that work's
referentiality,
her
study
of
Joyce's
language
is
a
valuable
starting
point
for
a fuller
comprehension
of his
ability
to
integrate referential and contextual poetic meaning-an integration operative in
Finnegans
Wake.
DENISE
E.
BLUE
University
of
California,
rvine
THE
BATTLE
OFTHE
BOURGEOIS:HE NOVEL
N
FRANCE,
1789-1848.
By
Priscilla
P.
Clark.
Paris:
Didier,
1973.
219
p.
The
primary
focus
of this
study
is
the
bourgeois
in French
fiction
between
1789
and
1848.
Equally
important
is
its
methodology:
it
attempts
a
sociological
approach
to literary problems. Clark aims at a middle range theory, not the comprehen-
sive
interpretations
of
the
grand theoreticians,
not
analyses
of
individual
works,
not
compilations
of data without
explanation
but rather some sort
of
limited
generalisations
which,
because
of
their
modesty,
will
be
more
solidly
established.
The works
of
Lukacs and
Girard
exemplify,
in her
view,
such
middle-range
theories
but
she dismisses
them
as
almost
entirely
formal.
By implication,
her
own work
will
emphasize
content. A
third,
closely
related aim
is
to
explore
the
critical
commonplace
whereby
the
novel
is
a
bourgeois genre.
Clark's
initial
hy-
188
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