The Modern Existence In Ulysses From The Perspective Of The Third Space Theory

James Joyce(1882-1941)was one of the greatest modernist writers of the 20 th century.With his ingenious writing,Ulysses shows a picture of modern existence.Ulysses focuses on the daily life of ordinary Irish people,who were under British colonial rule.The novel draws on the small,concrete and trivial aspects of individual existence,in order to represent the complexities of colonization,religion,race and class in the culturally mixed space of Ireland.The novel sets up a living space which is full of hybridized cultures for its oppressed and marginalized protagonists.In this living space,the external authority that holds the power of discourse often shakes the characters’ personal existence in the moment when they encounter.The characters can only hide into the neglected gaping space to take a breath of their existence.In this novel,Joyce presents us with a ’third space’ of cultural hybridity,which is full of confrontation,compromise and negotiation.Based on his perceptual experience of Dublin’s urban space,Joyce set up in Ulysses an urban space stuffed with complex and multifaceted heterogeneous content.The novel’s protagonist,Bloom,is immersed in carnal existence.In his wandering,his thoughts spill over into all parts of the text,making the urban space in the novel full of symbols of sex and reproduction.The masterful use of the symbols of the female body exposes that in the traditional gender dualism,male power discourse constructs women’s bodily existence.It requires us to take a comprehensive look at the constructed as well as the obscured bodily existence of modern women in a third space,which can reveal all power mechanisms.In the urban space depicted in Ulysses,the characters’ existence involves both public and private elements.Joyce,as a literary scholar who wielded the power of speaking,did not use utopian literary discourse to consolidate the elite’s domination of public space,but rather describes the concrete and actual existence of an underclass character,showing the real living space precipitated under the conceptual space of the city in detail.Joyce’s obsession with describing the real and palpable private existence of a marginalized individual is similar to Edward W.Soja(1940-2015)who introduced the perspective of "third space" to reveal the "space of actual reproduction".They have the same spatial way of thinking.Therefore,this thesis will use the theory of "Third Space" to explore the spatial existence of modernity in Ulysses.By re-examining the spatiality of Ulysses and the modern existence of its characters from the perspective of the Third Space theory,we intend to explore Joyce’s unique understanding and deep reflection on the space of modern existence.Joyce revealed the real living space where small citizens at the bottom of society live.By describing the real and imaginary experiences of the marginalized existence of a small citizen,Joyce expresses his criticism of the chaotic and disordered urban space and his call for an inclusive,open,equal and free living space.