| This dissertation examines the work of James Joyce in sequence, searching four distinct narratives for structural similarities that illuminate the author's evolving method of representation and his unique manipulation of words. The first chapter traces the subtle development of a narrating-arranging consciousness through the stories of Dubliners. This figure begins by frequently assuming or borrowing characters' voices, creating for the reader a sense of revealed inner thought and mediating control of the narrative from within the text itself. The second chapter explores the way this technique is more fully developed to realize the identity of Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The flexibility and responsiveness of Joyce's language, its innate and formal presentation of identity, expands as the narrating-arranging consciousness becomes more assertive, suggesting a general trend toward increased possibilities of meaning. In the third chapter, close analysis reveals that the narrating-arranging consciousness is the source of the disparate and complex styles shaping each episode of Ulysses. That these styles grow progressively more radical is evidence of the consciousness behind them, as it is emboldened by each success and encouraged to experiment further with the conventions of speech and description. In the fourth chapter, a reading of four representative excerpts from Finnegans Wake connects the difficult texture of this novel to the narrative and vocal trends organizing each of the preceding three books. The ultimate product of the narrating-arranging consciousness and of Joyce's method, based in every technique he invented and employing them all at once, is the layered polyphony with countless allusions and shifting sources that dominates his final novel. Reading each of these works in the broader context of the others uncovers hidden significance in the early writing and brings new clarity to the later books, justifying a collective approach to Joyce's work that balances circumstantial and thematic meaning. |
