Style In Ulysses

Ulysses, a landmark work of the modernist literature, explores the character's consciousness, multiple-level flux of impressions, moods and complexity of inner state, including both the rational and irrational sphere, like hallucination and dream. It depicts the multi-dimensional and complex inner world of modern man, revealing the spiritual crisis of Dubliners and beyond.Ulysses, as a most experimental novel, brings about radical changes to the modernist novel's artistic form. It incorporates techniques from poetry, painting, music, drama and movies, applying them for varying artistic purposes. Joyce's artistic originality is influenced by various schools of thought in literature and art like impressionism, expressionism, and cubism as well. It has virtually become a testing ground for the most sophisticated modernist theories.Ulysses has long claimed the critics' attention. Until 1970s critics have generally focused upon the novel's mythological and symbolic models and characters. Until the 1990s, other literary theories like semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction and others have been applied to the study of Ulysses.The issue of style in Ulysses seems unavoidable in the study of the novel, yet, in the strictest sense, no systematic investigation into the style has ever been conducted. Tindall and Hodgart have touched upon it to a degree. Erwin R. Steinberg's The Stream of Consciousness and Beyond (1973) simply deals with stream of consciousness as a technique. He has noticed the discontinuity of narrative in the chapter "Aelous". Marilyne French's The Book as world: James Joyce's Ulysses (1976), however, intends to work out a unifying theme out of it. Her comment on style, meant to illustrate a nonexistent unification of theme, sounds rather plausible. Peake's James Joyce's: the Citizen and Artist, regretfully with no delimitation of style and techniques, offers substantial help with comprehending the novel. Yet he intends to show how Bloom is initiating the birth of an artist Stephen. Karen Lawrence's Odyssey of Style in Ulysses (1981) perceives, in contrast with the initial style, a narrative gap in "Aeolus", which indicates a breakdown with the authority of style established in the former chapters. With her stubborn adherence to deconstruction theory, she alleges the transformation of styles in the latter parts serves no function except for its own.So far some tentative inference can be reached. First, no deliberate distinction has ever been made between style and technique. Second, style in Ulysses is generally approached in relation to its narrative mode. Their weakness is ostentatious. Firstly, stream of consciousness style, a style of paramount importance for Ulyssess, is overlooked, even in Lawrence's study. Secondly, critics basically take a negative view of Joyce's stylistic experiment. To put it simply, there exists a gap between the style and content.Among the Joycean study academic circle in China, Professor Li Wei-ping's Joyce's Aesthetics and Art of the Novels (2000), devotes one chapter particularly to Ulysses, providing acute analysis of its important stylistic features. Professor Li's book, as a whole, serves as an illuminating and inspiring guide to further study of Joyce.It would prove worthwhile and invaluable to execute a systematic research, comparatively speaking, into the protean transformation of styles in Ulysses. Firstly, style, to a great extent, is a threshold leading to Ulysses' artistic experiment in that it is a vehicle any literary artistic reform must resort to. Secondly, those issues involved in Joyce's experiment remain unresolved even today, for instance, the liberation of language expression from its own conventional bondage, the relation between language and reality, the delimitation between literary and nonliterary language, and the incorporation of other artistic forms by means of language into literature.Style is a key issue for Joyce's artistic career. He has been experimenting throughout his life. His wor...