Carnivalized Ulysses

Bakhtin's carnival theory, though greatly controversial, has been applied to the analysis of varied literary texts ever since its creation. However, this effort is scarcely seen in the analysis of Joyce's Ulysses. A careful reader might quickly notice the carnival elements as soon as he opens Ulysses. This thesis argues that there exists a corresponding relationship between Bakhtin's carnival theory and Joyce's Ulysses in that the former provides a theoretical basis for the latter while the latter gives a justification for the former.The thesis sets off with an introduction to Bakhtin's theory in relation to three basic concepts: carnival, carnivalesque and carnivalization. Carnival is both a general sense of the world and of language and a specific literary form. Carnivalesque is the carnivalizing of normal life. It includes familiar contact with people, parody, degradation and debasing, and so on. Carnivalization refers to the process of transforming carnivalesque into literary forms. Meant by its broadest sense, it is essentially a rebellious form of literature.Clowns and fools are indispensable to carnival celebrations. In carnival time they are crowned and decrowned; they ridicule and are ridiculed at. They dare to subvert everything sublime and sacred and rebel against officialdom and orthodoxy. In Ulysses we see Christianity is openly challenged by the blasphemous Mulligan, and profoundly, though obscurely, dispelled by Stephen. Bloom is set up as an antihero who is crowned and decrowned by Molly and by many others.As a general sense of the world, carnival certainly embraces various activities on the carnival square such as feasts and sexuality, funerals and birth, scuffles and vituperations. In Ulysses Bloom has descended from the elevation of Odysseus the real hero to secularity and his senses are unavoidably obsessed with foods, drinks and sexuality. Yet these are not altogether negative, for they carry the function of invigoration and birth. Birth is always related to death, though. Thus in Ulyssesfunerals become such occasions for gaiety where the dead are symbolic of new birth.Grotesque realism is one important aspect of the carnival culture. Ulysses is prevalent with a grotesque juxtaposition of perverse gormandizing, excretion, sex and death, coupled with a weird interest in the grotesque body. The grotesque body is characteristic of open orifices, protrusions, sprouts and branches in opposition to the closed bodies of gods. These closed bodies, however, are mocked at and ridiculed by Bloom and their likes, for they permit no chance for metabolism or rebirth.As a specific literary form, the spirit of carnival is first expressed in the language of Ulysses which has undergone a "revolution of the word". This language is a completely carnivalized one, launching a fierce attack on the normal rules of word formation, sentence construction and discourse makeup which belong to Standard English. Joyce has purposively squeezed such an "assemblage of heterogeneous material" into Ulysses that he has nearly broken the norm of standard fictional language.The structure of Ulysses has also undergone a process of carnivalization in that it breaks away from the traditional narrative mode and creates a fresh dynamic narration by involving the readers in the activity of reading and comprehension process. Traditional novels usually choose a two-dimensional narrative mode of space and time, in which the reader is given no chance for participation. Ulysses is, however, narrated in a three-dimensional narration of space, time and the reader's perspective so as to allow the reader's interaction.The thesis thereby concludes that Bakhtin's theory and Joyce's practice on carnival is in a corresponding relationship. Joyce's Ulysses presents for Bakhtin's theory an exemplification, while Bakhtin in turn lends Joyce a theoretical basis for fiction.