On Local Disturbances: Reflections on Joyce’s Use of Language in “Sirens”

Auteurs

  • David Pierce York St John College

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v7i1.184270

Mots-clés :

James Joyce, Ulysses, Sirens, Language

Résumé

This article explores the issue of language in the “Sirens’ episode of Ulysses. “Sirens” begins enigmatically with “Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing”. Glossing this requires something more than tying it to the consciousness of the two barmaids or indeed to the wider theme of the episode. With the help of some such awkward sentences and phrases taken for the most part from the Overture or Prelude to “Sirens”, I want to consider the processes at work here and especially how they might connect with politics and the colonial encounter. In particular I focus on how Joyce translators “French, Spanish, German, Italian, and modern Greek “tackle such phrases such as ‘Imperthnthn thnthnthn”. The sounds in the Overture are often detached from meaning, or their meaning is deferred until later in the episode, or their semantic field or phonological system is peculiar to English. In wrestling with Joyce’s texts, the translators remind us of what we might describe as “local disturbances”, which surround not only the Overture to “Sirens” but Joyce’s language in general. I then complicate this idea by suggesting a possible parallel in “Sirens”“an episode which is sometimes read in terms of the 1790s when the United Irishmen attempted to break the connection with the United Kingdom and which includes repeated pointed references to the ’98 song “The Croppy Boy” “ between local disturbances in language and local disturbances in Irish history.

Biographie de l'auteur

  • David Pierce, York St John College

    DAVID PIERCE is Professor of English at York St John College (in UK) and is a
    member of the Boards of the International James Joyce Foundation, and
    estudiosirlandeses, the new internet-based journal of Irish Studies. Among his
    publications are James Joyce’s Ireland (London and New Haven: Yale University Press,
    1992); Yeats’s Worlds: Ireland, England and the Poetic Imagination (London and New
    Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); James Joyces Ireland (Köln & Basel: Bruckner &
    Thünker, 1996); Sterne in Modernism / Postmodernism (co-editor with Peter de Voogd)
    (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996); W.B. Yeats: Critical Assessments 4 Vols (Robertsbridge:
    Helm Information, 2000); Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century: A Reader (Cork: Cork
    University Press, 2001). Forthcoming: The Harp Without the Crown: A Cultural History
    of Modern Irish Writing (Yale University Press, Autumn 2005). 

Références

Gifford, Don, with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, 2nd edn. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1989.

Gordon, John, Joyce and Reality: The Empirical Strikes Back. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004.

James Joyce, Ulysses. Ed Jeri Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

____. Odussšaj. Trans. Swkr£sthj Kay£sknj.Áthens: Kšdros, 1990.

____. Ulysse. Trans. Auguste Morel with assistance of Stuart Gilbert [1929]; Paris: Gallimard, 1957.

____. Ulises. Trans. J. Salas Subirat. 2nd ed. Buenos Aires: Santiago Rueda, 1952.

____. Ulises. Trans. José María Valverde. [1975]; Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1996).

____. Ulises. Trans. Francisco García Tortosa (rev ed) Madrid: Cátedra, 2003.

____. Ulisse. Trans. Giulio de Angelis. [1960]; Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1967.

____. Ulysse. Trans. Bona Flecchia. Firenze: Shakespeare and Company, 1995.

____. Ulysses. Trans. Hans Wollschläger. [1975]; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981.

Lewis, George Cornewall, On Local Disturbances in Ireland and On the Irish Church Question. London: B. Fellowes, 1836.

Pierce, David, Light, Freedom and Song: A Cultural History of Modern Irish Writing. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Senn, Fritz, Inductive Scrutinies: Focus on Joyce (ed Christine O’Neill) Dublin: Lilliput, 1995.

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Publiée

2005-06-30

Numéro

Rubrique

Fiction

Comment citer

Pierce, D. (2005). On Local Disturbances: Reflections on Joyce’s Use of Language in “Sirens”. ABEI Journal, 7(1), 163-182. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v7i1.184270