Foregrounded Linguistic Features In Ulysses

By way of description, interpretation and evaluation, my dissertation aims at a preliminary study of the stylistic values of the foregrounded linguistic features in Ulysses so as to get a better understanding and appreciation of Joyce's linguistic inventiveness in fiction. In so doing, I hope to foster readers' interest in reading and studying Ulysses, and thus to do my bit to the acceptance and popularity of Ulysses in China. This is quite an adventure because, to my knowledge, such an attempt has not yet been made. James Joyce is said to be a man of "no style" or "all styles". His work is not big in quantitative output, but any one of his four novels would suffice to make him the reputation of a great writer. Ulysses is one of Joyce's most remarkable achievements in the world stream-of-consciousness literature, but there is a funny phenomenon: more bought than read, more literary criticisms than linguistic/stylistic studies. For both readers and critics, one of the biggest obstacles lies in Joyce's fresh and new linguistic innovations which he carries so pervasively, so persistently through all his works from Dubliners via Ulysses to Finnegans Wake. In view of this situation, the thesis is to explore the linguistic obstacle: foregrounded linguistic features. The highlights are as follows: Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the background of the study and the dissertation proper, which consists of three major problems: Ulysses--the work, Ulysses' criticism and the composition of the thesis. The first problem includes my "encounter" with James Joyce, Ulysses' synopsis, Homeric parallels, its "sun's path" and its stylistic innovations. The second covers literary criticism and linguistic/stylistic criticism, the former of which is discussed according to three periods: the first period (1920s—1950s), the second period (1960s—1980s) and the third period (since 1990s). Compared with the former, linguistic/stylistic criticism is relatively inadequate and its findings are declared more in articles than book-length studies. Ulysses' criticism in China is just a first step out and there is a long way to go to catch up with world Joycean studies. The third problem takes into account such matters as defining "style" and "stream-of-consciousness style", the theory of foregrounding, the research aim, scope, method and layout of the dissertation. A linguistic foregrounding or deviation means a certain linguistic feature which breaks the accepted linguistic rule or enforces the rule by repetition or parallelism at various linguistic levels. Chapter 2 "Sound Effects" illustrates the special functions of some symbolic sounds, phonological figures and musical genres. Ulysses brings us into a world of sounds. The chimings of the church bells suggest a gloomy horrible overtone of death while the jingling sounds of both Bloom's old brass bed and the hackney imply one major theme of the novel--sexuality. Plett's model, though not yet perfect, provides a useful reference frame for a brief survey of the phonological figures in Ulysses. In the 15 phonological figures, assonance, alliteration, rhyme and others, are directly responsible for its poetical tendency. Music for Joyce carries special implications: music is not only a natural revelation of one's true feelings, but also an effective way to enrich the novel genre. The four songs at the Ormond bar have aroused Bloom's emotional communion and "The Croppy Boy" in particular reveals the betrayal theme. We come to know Bloom and the other characters particularly by their individual tastes in music. Chapter 3 is devoted to a detailed analysis of Ulysses' lexical deviations such as conversion, compound and word-play. For Joyce, words are the basic testing ground to try out his linguistic innovations. Verb and nonverb conversions, known as "dynamic" transfers, are short in form, but compact in meaning. Compounds such as "babemary" and "Besteglinton" are invested with rich cultural connotations, while neologisms like "throwaway" and "theirhisnothis...