Coherent Function Of Tense As Time Deixis In Stream Of Consciousness Novel Ulysses

Ulysses is one of the greatest novels in history of western literature, especially in stream of consciousness school. In Ulysses, Joyce breaks through the confinements of time and space and sets up a new world in which their characters can move freely through it. Without a complete plot and clear time clue, it's hard to interpret this' book from heaven'. As one of the most famous novels in the 20th century, Ulysses has been researched from various theoretical perspectives of stylistics, psychology, structurlism, modernism, feminism, etc., both home and abroad. This thesis tries to study Ulysses from the perspective of tense as time deixis in pragmatics. The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use (Brown & Yule,1983), i.e., context dependent. Without the traditional time sequence, characters'thoughts move freely in their inner world in Ulysses. That results in the mess mixture of past, present and future on the surface. Thus the comprehension of characters' thoughts is totally context dependent. Few linguistic expressions exemplify the relationship of language to context better than deictic terms. In this thesis, the analysis of tense as time deixis helps to reveal the context-dependent information under the mess surface. Temporal deictic projection of tense assists to find out the deictic center. Projection of psychological time manifests the real time clue inside characters'mind. The interpretation of the deliberately'abnormal'use of tense in Ulysses aids to find out the coherent message under the surface. The study of this thesis picks out the clue inside and reveals the coherence underlying the illogical and disconnected surface. It helps people become clearer about the the function of time deixis in finding the inner coherence in Ulysses and provides a new perspective in interpreting stream of consciousness novel Ulysses.