james joyce -- penelope lec
TRANSCRIPT
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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