Voyiatzaki, Evi (2000) The body in the text : James Joyce's Ulysses and the modern Greek novel. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the body's thematization in narrative, and as part of the aesthetic
consciousness of the modernist novel. Its starting point is Joyce's pioneering association of
Ulysses with the functions of a live body, and the interdisciplinary rationale that his
Thomist aesthetics of wholeness enact. Joyce's view of his text as a multi-levelled,
reciprocally interdependent hierarchy of various fields, including art and science, as
developed in the Linati and Gilbert Schemes, sheds light on the polyphonic and polyglottic
narratorial tactics of U. Joyce's enterprise is compared to the Greek modernist novel which
developed its innovative techniques in accordance with the general demand for a
reorientation of Greek literature toward introspection. The reception of U in Greece
coincided with the heyday of this attempt which was characterized by experimentation and
was influenced by psychoanalysis, phenomenology and anthropological studies. The three
Greek authors in this study, Stelios Xefloudas, Nikos Gavriil Pentzikis, Giorgos
Cheimonas, each of them representing a different period in the development of the modem
novel, were variously influenced by Joyce's work. The argument particularly focuses on
their use of the body in the text in the light of Joyce's work.
The foreword, a theoretical introduction, sets forth the terms of the argument. The first
chapter is a brief survey of Us reception in Greece. It discusses the quest for the renewal of
Greek literature which started around the thirties. Tracing the links of this renewal With
Joyce's work, it particularly focuses on the techniques of introspection and their association
with the body, as part of the aesthetic consciousness of the inner-orientated or 'introverted'
novel. The second chapter is an analysis of Joyce's paradigmatic use of the body in the text.
Focusing on the act of creation in comedy, scientific discovery and aesthetic rapture, it
discusses the psycho-physiological processes and the cultural psycho-dynamics which are
compressed within Q, and support its multi-perspectival and multi-interpretative orientation.
Joyce's mock-heroic, his anti-theology, the aesthetics of the androgynous artist, desire in
language and bodily interference in the act of writing are seen in relation to the body and in
the light of Joyce's explanatory schemes. Chapter three examines Xefloudas's attempted
assimilation of Joyce's introspective techniques, in the use of myth, in the questing voyager
archetype, and in desire in language through the myth of eternal return. The fourth chapter
discusses N. G. Pentzikis's Christian-Freudian-Jungian perspective on Joyce's work and his
reworking of Us motifs in a surrealist mode (dream, metamorphosis, free association). His
endeavour to subvert his own literary past takes place through the re-writing of Drosmiis's
novel, To Mythistorema fis Kytlas Ersis. In this book all elements of Greek modernism are
welded together. Pentzikis undoes and redoes the Parnassian novel, drawing heavily upon
Q, and the Hellenic and Byzantine legacies which he semi-parodically incorporates into his
art. His use of the Rabelaislan body and the grotesque, which reflects his language games,
also emulates Joyce's. The fifth chapter deals with Cheimonas, as a successor of the
previous authors. Cheimonas revisits all the thematic motifs of Joyce and of the
aforementioned Greek authors in the light of contemporary phenomenology,
psychoanalysis, psycho-linguistics and deconstruction. In an attempted assimilation of the
language of FW and Joyce's preoccupation with the sound of the word, he writes an
elliptical prose violated in its syntax, grammar and word-formation. His texts are a journey
to the origins of language. Through violent dramatizations of psycho-linguistic theories,
these texts aim at revealing the body's voice.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PA Classical philology P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Ulysses -- Criticism and interpretation, Human body in literature, Greek fiction -- History and criticism
Official Date:	August 2000
Dates:	Date Event August 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Bell, Michael, 1941-
Extent:	286 leaves
Language:	eng

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