Oxen of the Sun

In this chapter, the narrative breaks down into a series of imitations which are supposed to map the genealogy of Irish English. There's a lot to be said about this strange "birth" with all its trimesters and the retelling of evolutionary history in womb. But I think it's more interesting (and a little harder) to look at how the narratives interact with events in the plot (imagine that).

In Aeolus we were regularly interrupted by goofy headlines and useless rhetoric. It was pretty clear that Joyce was making a point about the relationship between the language that journalists use and their intentions. He reminded us that our knowledge of the events and characters that make up this book - and the knowledge we have about anything at all - is only as good as the point of view Joyce allows us to take.

In Oxen of the Sun, Joyce tests the limit of this premise. In Cyclops, Nausicaa, and Aeolus we were challenged to look behind the deceptive styles to find an underlying reality. Or at least that seemed like something that one could and should do. Gerty's syrupy narrative left things out explicitly for us to pick up on, like masturbation and menstruation. There seemed to be a concrete reality behind the rhetoric that could be revealed.

But in Oxen of the Sun, the narratives begin to constitute reality. It gets pretty hard to read into Bannon's intentions as he gazes at Milly's portrait. The style of an Irish cleric glosses over what seemed to be indicators of maliciousness in our previous encounters with this character. In Naussicaa, Joyce provided Bloom's stream-of-consciousness to counter Gerty's romantic imaginings. But in this chapter, important information often only gets touched by a single not-so-trustworthy voice. "Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours." The language doesn't allow Bannon to slip up much. Even conversations with Mulligan about condomns are cloaked in slang and innuendo. Umbrellas, coats "in the French fashion", and fairy mushrooms form a barrier of innocence that makes the most important information - what they are going to do to Milly - harder to discern.

Another moment of fractured reality occurs when Haines makes his absurd appearance - suddenly the murderer of Samuel Childs. It looks like a lot of these plot-points were written around the narrative styles not the other way around. The intellectual buffon of Britain becomes a mysterious ghostly character. Mulligan is "overcome with emotion."
These are flourishes of style that dramatically effect character development and action in the plot. Again, Joyce wants us to recognize the role that our point of view plays in the construction of reality.

This episode was really hard.