Ulysses: What was Stephen's auditive sensation?

I wish I could quote here all of "Episode 17 - Ithaca" from Joyce's Ulysses, but in print, the section is forty-some-odd pages long. Here's a very, very short excerpt:

"What was Stephen's auditive sensation?

He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the past.

What was Bloom's visual sensation?

He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future.

What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities?

Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Bloom's: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe.

What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with what exemplars?

In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian Osmond Tearle(died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare."

How intimately do you know the characters in your own writing?

Dubliners: Simile

I apologize for going AWOL. For the past few days, I've been in Montana, miles away from basic civilization, and I apologize for the blog's silence. Let us continue with another rhetorical tool: similes.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about similes. Although they can add aesthetic and descriptive power to a story, they can also be cliche, unclear, distracting, and unprofessional. Further, in their submission guidelines, national publishers like Baen Books have said of writing style, "Simple is generally better; in our opinion good style, like good breeding, never calls attention to itself."

So what makes a good simile? In my opinion, a good simile not only describes appearance, relationships, or behavior, but also establishes tone or reveals something that cannot be succinctly illustrated in cold prose. Every simile should develop a certain theme, motif, or image while establishing a clear connection between two unlike people or objects.

In short, a good simile is an effective simile. I think these examples from James Joyce's Dubliners are especially effective:

"She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image..."

"It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at their feet."

"Simultaneously Mr. Alleyne, a little man wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a cleanshaven face, shot his head up over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless it seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers."

Occasionally, a simile, to be effective, will need some explanation or elaboration:

"But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

"Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small full mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which made her look like a little perverse madonna."

A good simile, however, need not be overly artful. They can also be simple:

"He's hard up, like the rest of us."

"I admire the man personally. He's just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He's fond of his glass of grog and he's a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he's a good sportsman."

Admittedly, this is only a small sample of what could be said of similes. Like salt, they enhance the flavor of a story if used sparingly. As the author, you ultimate decide, in the context of your own writing, what makes a simile effective.

How can you use similes more effectively in your own writing?

The Sisters: Chiaroscuro

Here's another list of rhetorical tools: http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm. Although this site is not nearly as extensive as the Silva Rhetoricae, it's more user friendly.

Today I'd like to feature a rhetorical technique that neither virtualsalt.com nor the BYU humanities department included in their compilations: chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro is the artistic balancing of light and darkness. It's one of the most common - and in my opinion, most powerful - techniques used in literature. Here's an example from "The Sisters," the first short story in Joyce's Dubliners collection:

"There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

All of us inherently sense what darkness symbolizes. In this passage, darkness is closely associated with hopelessness, death, maleficence or evil, sin, and fear. Light embodies the opposite qualities; the passage above juxtaposes light with life and truth, but in any religion, light is also a common symbol of revelation, goodness, and deity.

How can chiaroscuro enhance your own writing?

Portrait of the Artist: Characterization

Characterization is important. It gives life to your characters and resonance to your narrative. In the academic world, it's formally known as "characterismus," and BYU’s Silva Rhetoricae furnishes the following definition - "The description of a person's character. If this is restricted to the body, this is effictio; if restricted to a person's habits, this is ethopoeia."

How would you describe a character in a story? You might focus on their mannerisms, interests, or behaviors (ethopoeia), or on the other hand, you might illustrate what they look like (effictio). Allow me to provide examples.

I think a wonderful example of ethopoeia comes from A Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel. In the novel, Stephen Dedalus describes his father as "A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past."

Although the father’s physical features are left unmentioned, we gain a sense of who he is because of what he has done.

As for effictio, which deals with physical appearance, consider another passage from the same novel. One of the priests, Father Dolan, is described like this: “Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan's white-grey not young face, his baldy white-grey head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes looking through the glasses.”

How can you balance these two methods of characterization in your own writing?

The Dead: Zeugma

This is one of my favorite websites: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Rhetoric is such a powerful and beautiful subject to study; an increased awareness of any of these techniques is guaranteed to approve your writing, no matter your experience. Plus, the more you have tucked in your literary tool belt, the more interesting, flexible, and effective your writing will be.

Rhetoric, admittedly, can be a little intimidating at first. Few rhetorical tools have English names; however, many such tools are already familiar to us. Take "zeugma," for example. Zeugma simply means that one part of speech is animating multiple other parts of speech.

Here's one of the first lines from "The Dead" by James Joyce. In the story, the two hostesses are bustling about, ensuring that the final preparations are in place for their annual party:

"Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come."

Let's take a closer look. To help the reader feel the mild frenzy taking place, the compound subject, Miss Kate and Miss Julia, is animated by a number of different verbs. In one sentence, the author writes that Miss Kate and Miss Julia are gossiping, laughing, fussing, walking, peering, and calling. One subject, multiple verbs. That's zeugma! (Diazeugma, to be exact.)

How can you better incorporate zeugma into your own writing?

Portrait of the Artist: And all over the playgrounds

I was first introduced to James Joyce by a good friend. She had been absolutely enthralled by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, so whether out of peer pressure or out of prideful competitiveness, I decided I had to read the book for myself. I, too, was enthralled.

Let me ask you this:

As a writer, how would you describe a cricket game?

Cricket and literature have had a close relationship for years. Writers like A.A. Milne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Joyce's one-time secretary, Samuel Beckett, were all notorious players of the sport. Personally, however, I doubt that I could do justice to cricket. My own attempt to describe a cricket game with any amount of intelligence would be pretty laughable. I'm too much of a baseball fan. Contrarily, although Joyce was never known for physical prowess on the field, his description, in my opinion, is revolutionary. I think all writers can learn something from the passage below:

"And all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowling twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl."

What literary techniques does Joyce use to bring the game to life?

Ulysses: Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch

Here's another example of masterful writing from Ulysses:

"Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white."

In this passage, Leopold Bloom, the novel's protagonist, is going about an ordinary day in Dublin. His thoughts, however, show that he, like all of us, is constantly living in two different worlds - an internal world and an external. Externally, Bloom sees children with ice cream, but this simple sensory information sends a wave of disjointed ripples through his mind.

Every human being has a fragmented mind. As a result, we often have difficulty concentrating on a single object or idea for more than a few seconds. We are often given to irrational breaks in our thoughts. This natural psychological tension in reality and in fiction, however, opens up a plethora of possibilities for writers. Let's take another look at the passage above. Against the unremarkable foreground of a girl scooping ice cream, Joyce appeals to at least three of the reader's senses; reveals Bloom’s demeanor, his opinions, and his satirical wit; and also provides a glimpse into the protagonist's past - all in only a few lines.

As a writer, are you in tune with what your characters are personally experiencing?

Ulysses: The figure seated on a large boulder...

Continuing our discussion of how creative writing should give readers an experience, I've invited James Joyce to be with us today. Joyce's Ulysses was named the best novel of the twentieth century by the Modern Library, and without doubt, this author is a master of his craft. Consider the following passage from Ulysses:

"The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair inhue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (ULEX EUROPEUS). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble."

What makes this writing effective? What do readers experience as they read this passage?