james joyce -- penelope lec

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  • 7/30/2019 James Joyce -- Penelope Lec

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    Boselli 1

    PenelopeLecture

    -Opening Remarks

    +Making Word flesh

    +Few have begun Ulysses without its closing lines: yes I said yes I will Yes.

    +Joyce felt it the clou (the star turn) of the book

    -A response to the beginning ofThe Odyssey (Sing in me,O Muse)

    -Molly consenting to whoredom, her performance role

    +If we take her to be Homeric Penelope, the answer would be

    an emphatic no+Hugh Kenners claim about the end of Ithacas segue into Penelope

    -Egg, Brightdayler, morning talk perhaps spur Mollys thoughts on breakfast and the

    following soliloquy

    +The chapter leaves us wondering: Who is Molly?Joyces replies vary, contradictory as

    Molly herself is

    -Sane full amoral perfectly sane full amoral fertilisable untrustworthy engaging

    limited prudent indifferent Weib.Ich bin de Fleisch der stets bejaht. - SL

    +Wife. I am of the flesh always affirmed

    +Joyce often referred to her as limited working-class vocabulary

    -Prehumanpresumably posthuman. - SL

    +Penelope encloses the book on both ends

    +She has little regard for politics, mortality, morality, and the feelings of others+Eight sentencesfour cardinal points of the body (breasts, arse, cunt, womb)

    -Two correspond to each

    +The sentences are cyclic

    -Tolomeos diagram about 8 sentences (Final Octagon of Ulysses)

    +Timeframe is infinity, Molly born on the eighth, breasts

    +Synopsis of the Chapter

    +Post-2 AM, Bloom is in bed with Molly, somewhat erect, as Molly asks him about his day

    -His account is true, false, and incomplete

    +Molly menstruates, her stomach rumbles, she farts, feels Blooms cold feet, either masturbates

    and climaxes (as some have alleged) or trails off to sleep

    -Dramatically altering the tone of the ending

    +Homeric Correspondence

    +Penelopes weaving and unweaving reflected in Mollys constructing and deconstructing of who

    we understand her as

    -A byproduct of her loneliness

    +She fills seems to transform for companionship

    -Whore role for Bloom, adulteress for Boylan

    -What about Molly is absolutely true?

    +She dislikes: her foot, books with a Molly, taller men, solitude

    +She likes: jaunting in a train, seeing a regiment pass, the smell of an

    expensive shop, hearing Bloom stumble up the stairs in the morning,

    flowers, and her bed

    +The ending is Bloom slaying the suitors

    -Compare the proposal moment as seen in Lestrygonians (176)+Me alone now.

    +This Ulysses sees his

    -Final hint of negativity

    +I thought well as well him as another

    -But that doesnt matter once she accepts

    -We see that Boylan is not the frontrunner

    +But rather Mulvey, the first

    -Mulveys was the first v. Mulvey was the first

    -The man in Eumaeus

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    Boselli 2

    +Wandering Rocks, the sailor with a bum leg up Eccles St.

    +Flesh/Earth compared to Skeleton/Comet

    -Joyce and the transformative feminine

    -Flower of the bath v. Flower of the mountain (498, 783)

    -Manuscript/Composition (Bring Rosenbach text!)

    +Written to completion with ease during summer and fall of 1921-Joyce assisted by briefcase delivered from Trieste

    +Likely contained Noras obscene letters of 1909

    -Some confidantes of Joyces, e.g., Ellman, purport that Joyce

    originally intended to write an epistolary Penelope

    +Joyce turned his notebook upside, began Penelope at the end

    -Recalls the Torah

    +Prehuman (Hebrew)posthuman (Modernity)

    +Vision of Rudys bar mitzvah at the end of Circe

    -Just as Leopold and Molly sleep in inverted positions

    +Ithaca and Penelope were the first chapters in draft form

    +Penelope appears completely spontaneous

    -Rather, it is a mosaic-like catalogue

    +Over nine proof stages, more than 54% of the chapter was added

    -Portions of different styles, concerning different characters and places

    +Gothic rape fantasy, sentimental romantic affair, lesbianism

    +As contradictory as Molly is

    -Including the final concatenation of yesses

    +In this way, Molly is the Modernist character

    -But also the Postmodern character

    +She is language arranged to present a reality

    -Symphathy, newphew (18.730-731)

    +Other characters a conceived then toyed with

    -Molly succeeds in neither structuralism nor poststructuralism

    +Joyce saw Penelope as a planet orbiting around the text

    -Heavenly body heaven & body

    +She is more than the sum of one individual discourse

    -The Selective Fallacy

    +A critical mistake made when discussing Molly

    -Interpretations convincing enough in themselves tend to refute one

    another in addition to affirming that any point about Molly may be

    argued given her consistent inconsistency

    -Penelope Unto Itself+Compare with Blooms remembrance of the proposal (176:22)

    +Yes

    -Stands up against the overwhelmingly negative other 95% of the chapter

    - In Ulysses I had sought to end with the least forceful work I could possibly

    find. I had found the word yes which is barely pronounced, which denotes

    acquiescence, self abandon, relaxation, and end of all resistance.SL

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    Boselli 3

    +YHWH

    -Gea-Tellus, Eve, whore (seen elsewhere), simple woman

    +All and neither

    -At once the culmination of the evolution of Joyces

    female and also just a single representative

    -Yes is to cunt as answer affirmatively is to vagina

    +A word of action

    +Like biblical tetragrammaton YHWH

    -The final sequence

    +Written in dactylsheartbeat

    +Rosenbach: I put my arms around him and drew him down to me so he could

    feel my breasts all perfume and I said I will yes.

    -and I said yes I will yes (Galley 2)

    -and I said yes I will yes. (Galley 3)

    -and yes I said yes I will yes. (Galley 4)

    -yes and his heart was going like mad yes and yes I said yes I will

    Yes. (Typescript)

    +Yes final manuscript

    +It is true thatyes is hyperemphasized in the novels final pages

    -Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921 seals off the narrative

    +Cautioning us not to question whether or not Molly will bring Bloom breakfastin bed that morning, or if she will dissolve her affair with Boylan

    -Mollys sleep shuts down the world

    Remainder of Paper Format

    -Write about Dot

    +Yes.

    -Muse briefly about the demands of modernity on people

    +Why the Yes and . are advantageous

    +Use ofOdyssey to tap into essential human qualities

    -Timeframe (Trieste-Zurich-Paris)

    +Cautions us not to care about future, but deduce from June 16, 1904

    -Undermining

    +Time frame is arbitrary

    -He began working on Ulysses prior to 1914

    -Any archetype falls apart without timeframe

    +Just simple people

    +Homeric correspondence falls apart

    -She is an unfaithful Penelope

    -The essential qualities of the source material disintegrate

    +Bloom and Molly as a yin-yang pair

    -Mollys aswell as him well as another

    +Demolishes everything but Mollys transformative femininity

    -Protagonist could have been Mulvey

    -Molly not just earth

    Mollys as well as him well as another

    Blooms fetishes, masochism

    She is an unfaithful Penelope

    The arbitrary