Lacanian 'Pussy': Towards a Psychoanalytic Reading of Patrick McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto
Wish that there had been nothing to say...
Well if this doesn't go right along with the theme of literary criticisms being a way to give myself a migraine I don't know what does. I all honesty I think one of the most frustrating thing about this piece was once again the rampant psychobabble that filled the pages of this criticism. I do have to admit that that I really enjoyed a lot of the historical bits that were throughout the piece, but I'm a bit of a history buff. Part of the reason that I enrolled in this course was to get a more cultural grasp on Ireland and its very comforting to see something that I do know about (history and in a broader sense the political ramifications between the Irish Nationalists and Unionists) come back into play.
When it came around to the matter of "Sameness" I was actually more interested in looking up Seamus Heaney's poem "Whatever you say say nothing", (http://poetry.mirandasbeach.com/content/view/745/53/) and I just couldn't help but put most of my focus on that. This poem really is how things are, in many situations. Heaney writes quite a bit about the Troubles of Ireland and how it's affecting the everyday life of the Irish person.
Heaney comments "Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing, Expertly civil tongued with civil neighbours". In all honesty, and please don't flay me alive here, I can see similarities to what was happening in that time period to what occurred in several German occupied countries during WWII. It got to the point in Ireland where people were afraid to talk to each other, people that they had grown up next to and gone to school with were suddenly 'against' each other because they may be the wrong religion or the wrong political affiliation. For so long the " 'One side's as bad as the other,' never worse" mentality cited by Heaney caused a buildup of apathy that eventually exploded from a powder keg of political and religious bigotry that had gone unsaid for so long.
Heaney also mentions a group of people called the 'wee six' as well as Ballymurphy. The two are actually in different verses of the poem but I believe that the 'wee six' is a reference to the first six civilians killed at the Ballymurphy Massacre on August 9th of 1971. These people ranged from a catholic priest trying to help another wounded man to an Irish woman who had been standing across the street from the military base.
There are so many references to the secular behavior of Ireland made by Heaney its really impossible for me to break it all down right now... I know though that the poem was far more enlightening than the criticism.
As to my final project, I'm still tossing around a few ideas and trying to narrow down my option. I thought of doing a comic book representation of some of my favorite scenes from multiple books. I also thought about doing songs, that idea struck a chord (pun not intended) with me. I also had the idea to create a movie poster with a few tag lines for each book, or some type of movie trailer to go along with it. Like I said I'm still really tossing around ideas. Advice is more than welcome and wanted.
WS
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Literary Criticism: Rhythm and Flow
A Literary Criticism of “A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man And The Individuating Rhythm Of Modernity” by Tobias Boes
Music has long held the key to human emotions, having the knack for evoking perhaps some of the most profound thoughts or actions. However writers like Joyce took the concepts behind music and put them to paper in ways that exhibit this link perhaps a bit better than others. Tobias Boes goes to great lengths to explain the rhythmic feeling of Joyce’s “A Portrait of a Young Artist”, and how these rhythms further the concepts of epiphany and leitmotif. He also goes into a great amount of detail to explain the polyrhythmic sense of life of a colonial city and its impact on those individuals who live in its world. We also are given the concepts of the Bildungsroman, a German writing style in which the novel explains the development or the coming of age of the protagonist through a series of events that shape the characters processes of action, as well as the ideas of the modernist writer, whose emphasis is placed on a post-agrarian, post-medieval society that is progressing into the state of industrial economy. Boes poses the thought that Joyce is somewhere between the two and spends quite a bit of time offering the view points of other authors on that very subject.
In the early portion of his analysis, Boes points out the dating of the post script offered by Joyce at the end of A Portrait (“Dublin 1904 Trieste 1914”) and comments that “A more suitable ending to a novel that similarly frustrates the conventions of the well-made plot by its constant vacillation between disjunctive and conjunctive tendencies could hardly be imagined.” (Pg 767) Boes tries to make clear, although in an overly wordy manner, that although well written Joyce’s tendency to drastically change from a wholeheartedly unrelated set of experiences to an series of linear moments is a slap in the face to conventional storytelling and yet it proved to be more than appropriate for this tale. The major tie between the postscript and Boes’ statement is the lack of continuation and implications that the writing of the novel had occurred twice by the lack of hyphening between the two dates, much like the lack of unity in a large portion of the literature. This thought also goes into some of the belief of the leitmotif, a reoccurring idea, image, or theme that predominates the piece.
The leitmotif and the epiphany are the two predominating factors of Joyce's work and a good portion of Boes' criticism is devoted to those subject. I believe that Boes spends far longer discussing the leitmotif, allowing the musical imagery triggered by the concept of the leitmotif to drastically predominate his work. However the Epiphany, and the attention given to it, are vastly important to the work. Boes implies that the manner in which Joyce separated his work into chapters was derived from the musical composition, with the leitmotif predominating and the epiphany used as a way to move from chapter to chapter, as if bracketing the musical work like the bars of a composition. We see this imagery replicated in Joyce's work as well when Stephen is on the train. The way that the telegraph poles bracket the movement of the train and the eventual movement of the passengers is as if there are musical bars, breaking up the progress of Stephen's own internal processes.
The idea of the Bildungsroman, the novel of development, as somehow being an opposition of novels of modernity however is not one that I cannot support. According to Gerald Delanty, a writer for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, "Modernity is thus a particular kind of consciousness, which defines the present, in its relation to the past, which must be continuously recreated; it is not a historical epoch that can be periodized." Looking at this breakdown of Modernity, even sociologically there is absolutely no reason why a novel of development can't also be a novel of modernity. The fact that Joyce wrote A Portrait as a stream of consciousness style of novel supports the modernity aspect, however the journey that Stephen takes definitely a transitory approach in which we witness the development of his views as he grows into an adult. This follows the almost cookie cutter approach that is required of a novel to be considered part of the Bildungsroman style.
Perhaps one of the less expected parts of this criticism for me was the information offered about the concept of the polyrythmicality of a city and the influence it has on the individuals who live there. According to Henry Lefebvre, a French sociologist specializing in rhythmanalysis which is a study of the patterns of everyday life, "Polyrythmicality in this context should be understood as the simultaneous existence in close spatial proximity of life -worlds that place differing emphases on the linear and cyclical elements that constitute historical experience." This concept, in and of itself, is profound not just in the historical emphasis that many refer to it in. In the original rhythmanalysis, the cities studied were those of the Mediterranean, however this concept is not in any way exclusive to those locations. In every city throughout history there has been a differing rhythm and flow to the different 'sections' of a city. Whether you're listening to the low grumblings and rustlings of a back alley or the hustle and bustle of main street, there are different rhythms that operate a city. This is actually seen rather intently in Joyce's novel, as Stephen makes his way through life, growing accustomed to the rhythms of his locations and often seeking them out when he needs to change where he's going in his life.
Although it was placed in a rather difficult and jargon-y manner, Boes took his time explaining the leitmotif and the epiphany as musical components that helped make up the polyrhythmic nature of Joyce's version of Ireland, full of flavor and context which shaped our protagonist. He also drew attention to the points of style and contention often put forward by other writers, seeking to qualify Joyce into a single literary identity, which in itself contrasted the polyrhythmic concept behind the world of Joyce's novel. Simply put, Joyce's novel can't be qualified as simply a Bildungsroman or a novel of modernity, or many other things, because (time for an epiphany) it is all of those. That sense of being and non being, of existing on many levels at once is one of the greatest underlying leitmotifs of Joyce's work.
Works citied:
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London: Penguin, 1993)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the "Individuating Rhythm" of Modernity, Tobias Boes
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore (London: Continuum, 2004), 92.
Delanty, Gerard. 2007. "Modernity." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer. 11 vols. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing
Music has long held the key to human emotions, having the knack for evoking perhaps some of the most profound thoughts or actions. However writers like Joyce took the concepts behind music and put them to paper in ways that exhibit this link perhaps a bit better than others. Tobias Boes goes to great lengths to explain the rhythmic feeling of Joyce’s “A Portrait of a Young Artist”, and how these rhythms further the concepts of epiphany and leitmotif. He also goes into a great amount of detail to explain the polyrhythmic sense of life of a colonial city and its impact on those individuals who live in its world. We also are given the concepts of the Bildungsroman, a German writing style in which the novel explains the development or the coming of age of the protagonist through a series of events that shape the characters processes of action, as well as the ideas of the modernist writer, whose emphasis is placed on a post-agrarian, post-medieval society that is progressing into the state of industrial economy. Boes poses the thought that Joyce is somewhere between the two and spends quite a bit of time offering the view points of other authors on that very subject.
In the early portion of his analysis, Boes points out the dating of the post script offered by Joyce at the end of A Portrait (“Dublin 1904 Trieste 1914”) and comments that “A more suitable ending to a novel that similarly frustrates the conventions of the well-made plot by its constant vacillation between disjunctive and conjunctive tendencies could hardly be imagined.” (Pg 767) Boes tries to make clear, although in an overly wordy manner, that although well written Joyce’s tendency to drastically change from a wholeheartedly unrelated set of experiences to an series of linear moments is a slap in the face to conventional storytelling and yet it proved to be more than appropriate for this tale. The major tie between the postscript and Boes’ statement is the lack of continuation and implications that the writing of the novel had occurred twice by the lack of hyphening between the two dates, much like the lack of unity in a large portion of the literature. This thought also goes into some of the belief of the leitmotif, a reoccurring idea, image, or theme that predominates the piece.
The leitmotif and the epiphany are the two predominating factors of Joyce's work and a good portion of Boes' criticism is devoted to those subject. I believe that Boes spends far longer discussing the leitmotif, allowing the musical imagery triggered by the concept of the leitmotif to drastically predominate his work. However the Epiphany, and the attention given to it, are vastly important to the work. Boes implies that the manner in which Joyce separated his work into chapters was derived from the musical composition, with the leitmotif predominating and the epiphany used as a way to move from chapter to chapter, as if bracketing the musical work like the bars of a composition. We see this imagery replicated in Joyce's work as well when Stephen is on the train. The way that the telegraph poles bracket the movement of the train and the eventual movement of the passengers is as if there are musical bars, breaking up the progress of Stephen's own internal processes.
The idea of the Bildungsroman, the novel of development, as somehow being an opposition of novels of modernity however is not one that I cannot support. According to Gerald Delanty, a writer for the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, "Modernity is thus a particular kind of consciousness, which defines the present, in its relation to the past, which must be continuously recreated; it is not a historical epoch that can be periodized." Looking at this breakdown of Modernity, even sociologically there is absolutely no reason why a novel of development can't also be a novel of modernity. The fact that Joyce wrote A Portrait as a stream of consciousness style of novel supports the modernity aspect, however the journey that Stephen takes definitely a transitory approach in which we witness the development of his views as he grows into an adult. This follows the almost cookie cutter approach that is required of a novel to be considered part of the Bildungsroman style.
Perhaps one of the less expected parts of this criticism for me was the information offered about the concept of the polyrythmicality of a city and the influence it has on the individuals who live there. According to Henry Lefebvre, a French sociologist specializing in rhythmanalysis which is a study of the patterns of everyday life, "Polyrythmicality in this context should be understood as the simultaneous existence in close spatial proximity of life -worlds that place differing emphases on the linear and cyclical elements that constitute historical experience." This concept, in and of itself, is profound not just in the historical emphasis that many refer to it in. In the original rhythmanalysis, the cities studied were those of the Mediterranean, however this concept is not in any way exclusive to those locations. In every city throughout history there has been a differing rhythm and flow to the different 'sections' of a city. Whether you're listening to the low grumblings and rustlings of a back alley or the hustle and bustle of main street, there are different rhythms that operate a city. This is actually seen rather intently in Joyce's novel, as Stephen makes his way through life, growing accustomed to the rhythms of his locations and often seeking them out when he needs to change where he's going in his life.
Although it was placed in a rather difficult and jargon-y manner, Boes took his time explaining the leitmotif and the epiphany as musical components that helped make up the polyrhythmic nature of Joyce's version of Ireland, full of flavor and context which shaped our protagonist. He also drew attention to the points of style and contention often put forward by other writers, seeking to qualify Joyce into a single literary identity, which in itself contrasted the polyrhythmic concept behind the world of Joyce's novel. Simply put, Joyce's novel can't be qualified as simply a Bildungsroman or a novel of modernity, or many other things, because (time for an epiphany) it is all of those. That sense of being and non being, of existing on many levels at once is one of the greatest underlying leitmotifs of Joyce's work.
Works citied:
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London: Penguin, 1993)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the "Individuating Rhythm" of Modernity, Tobias Boes
Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore (London: Continuum, 2004), 92.
Delanty, Gerard. 2007. "Modernity." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer. 11 vols. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing
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