Answer the questions:
What’s the chief peculiarity of Joyce’s outlook?
How does Joyce reproduce the thoughts of his characters? What is the “stream-of-consciousness method”?
Characterise the author’s speech.
Characterise the imagery in the description of the sea.
What can be said about Joyce’s vocabulary?
Characterise the syntax of the extract.
How is the idea of death rendered in the text?
Analyse the intertextual inclusions in the text.
Why does Joyce mix poetic images with naturalistic details?
Does Joyce use colloquialisms?
Summarise the peculiarities of Joyce’s style.
Answer the questions:
What’s the chief peculiarity of Joyce’s outlook?
How does Joyce reproduce the thoughts of his characters? What is the “stream-of-consciousness method”?
Characterise the author’s speech.
Characterise the imagery in the description of the sea.
What can be said about Joyce’s vocabulary?
Characterise the syntax of the extract.
How is the idea of death rendered in the text?
Analyse the intertextual inclusions in the text.
Why does Joyce mix poetic images with naturalistic details?
Does Joyce use colloquialisms?
Summarise the peculiarities of Joyce’s style.
1 ashplant — here: walking-stick made of ash
2 seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss ooos — these words render the speech of the waves ("the wavespeech")
3 cups of rocks — hollows and cavities in the rocks
4 foampool — shallow water covered with foam
5 hising up their petticoats — these are words occurring in a song that Stephen had heard his friend Mulligan sing eurlier the same morning
6 upturning coy, silver fronds — shyly raising their silvery stems and leaves
7 Saint Ambrose — a Catholic saint (5th century)
8 diebus ac noctibus iniursia patiens ingemiscit (Lat.) — he who suffers injuries complains day and night
9 to no end gathered — brought together without any purpose
10 loom of the moon — here: the influence of the moon (the ebb and flow are caused by the attraction of the moon)
11 fathom — about 180 cm, a measure chiefly used to state depth
12 full fathom five thy father lies — quotation from Ariel's song in Shakespeare's play The Tempest (Act 1, Scene II)
13 bar – here: bar of sand, also a strip of shallow water
14 rubble - stones
15 fanshoals of fishes — a number (a shoal) of fishes resembling in form a large fan
16 undertow – here: under the water
17 bobbing – here: swinging
18 a porpoise — a sea-animal; a pace a pace a porpoise—moving slowly, pace after pace, like a porpoise (note the alliteration)
19 sunk though he be buneath the watery floor —.a line from Milton's poem Lycidas that had occurred to Stephen earlier that same morning when he first heard about the drowned man
20 bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine — Stephen means the evil smell of the dead body surrounded by dirty sea-water
21 a quiver of minnows etc. — his body has become the titbit (choice morsel) for minnows
22 barnacle goose – arctic goose visiting England in winter
23 God becomes man etc. — God makes a man, the man is drowned and eaten by the fish, the goose eats the fish and is used to make featherbeds
24 offal - remains
25 hauled stark over the gunwale — his naked body is hauled overboard
26 a seachange this brown eyes saltblue - Stephen means that the sea changes brown eyes into saltblue, giving the eyes of the dead its own colour
27 Prix de Paris (French) – the first prize received in Paris. Joyce implies that death by drowning being the easiest, it would be sure to be awarded the biggest prize, in preference to all other deaths. The French words and the English phrases following it are the words of common advertisements.
28 allbright he falls etc. — a free quotation from Milton's Paradise Lost
29 dico, qui nescit occasum (Lat.) — I say he knows no death
30 cockle hat — a hat bearing the badge of a pilgrim, a scallop shell; staff — here: pilgrim's stick
31 my sandal shoon — quotation from Byron's Childe Harold: "not in vain he bore his sandal-shoon and scallop-shell" (shoon — arch. plural of shoe)
32 of all the glad new year, mother... — the beginning of a hackneyed quotation from Tennyson's poem The May Queen: "of all the glad new year, mother, the maddest merriest day". The optimistic ending is sacrificed for the sarcastic "rum tum tiddledy turn" whose rhythm is meant to render the rhythm of Tennyson's poem.
33 Lawn Tennyson — a play on words: Tennyson — tennis, thence lawn tennis(on)
34gia (Ital.) — already; Joyce means that Tennyson, the gentleman poet, belongs to the past