Ben Holleman/Vivian Pigott

Dr. Robert Langenfeld

English 657

22 April 2002

Bowen, Zack. Ulysses as a Comic Novel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989.

Bowen’s thesis here is that contemporary critical theory in the last few years has “not so much objected to the characterization of Ulysses as a comic novel” as it has “tended to ignore the implications of Joyce’s comedy”… (xi). His preface in itself is an accessible essay about the serious omission of James Joyce’s comic brilliance and technique by too many Joycean scholars. Perhaps the most interesting reference is to Carl Jung’s criticism of the novel: “Everything is de-souled, every particle of warm blood has been chilled, events unroll in icy egoism,” says he. “In all the book there is nothing pleasing, nothing refreshing, nothing hopeful, but only things that are grey, grisly, gruesome, or pathetic … all from the seamy side of life”… (ix). Bowen resoundingly and compellingly disagrees, presenting his arguments in an understandable and organized format.

The book consists of five chapters, each of which explores some theme or literary device employed by Joyce within the context of comedy. Bowen’s first chapter, “A Biological and Cultural Approach,” relies on Suzanne Langer’s essay, “The Comic Rhythm,” as a lens through which to view the comedic characters, motivation, language and structure of Ulysses” (1). Bowen clearly believes that Joyce’s masterpiece is in the “mainstream of comedy, which provides the vital life force of the novel” (1). He echoes Langer in viewing comedy as the reflection of a “basic biological pattern of life (life rhythm), which when disrupted tries to restore itself and the natural balance of existence.” Langer’s examples of a tree growing taller in the shade and a fish “assuming new functions” with its other fins when part of its tail is bitten off represent survival in the face of life’s inevitable obstacles. A comic novel is defined here as the “restoration of balance or revivification, so closely associated with spring” (2). The reader must grasp this concept from the beginning if he is to understand the comedic framework of Ulysses. This first chapter is replete with references advancing the author’s theory that in order to survive, we must extricate ourselves from the often self-imposed prison and poison of society. Stephen’s “past, bound up in allusions which display a Catholic sense of guilt over sins relating to religion, country, and family” can only be survived by detachment. Bowen descibes the young artist’s dependence upon the “dramatic” as an element that can only be found in comedy. Stephen is no Hamlet, and his realization that he is not, is comic rather than tragic. In contrast to Stephen (but consistent with the comedic structure) is Bloom’s survival strategy. Says Bowen: “While Stephen’s all-encompassing theories about life and art and Hamlet are trivialized in the library scene, Bloom’s mundane philosophy and rationality gain importance as natural functions of survival and vitality for the common man” (5). Most readers (and people trying to survive the malady of life) would agree that meaning and ability to function in an imperfect world result not from exhausting efforts to change the unchangeable, but to adapt and (sometimes) to laugh. Bowen assures us that if we are not “carried away with self-importance,” we can see that the “very paradox of [Bloom’s] reliving Odysseus’s adventures every day provides its own comic salvation” (5). Unlike tragedy, Bowen maintains that comedy does not bring “ultimate solutions to life; it simply depicts the vitality in the ongoing struggle” (7). Bloom’s vitality is created by his ability to find satisfaction from basic bodily functions, as any reader knows, and it is this serious but comic adventure that saves Bloom from himself and from Dublin. Bowen suggests that the “pretensions of Stephen’s vision cannot stand the light of comic reality because they lack vitality.” At the heart of Ulysses, Bowen reminds us, is the “incomplete and ongoing, an experience of the vital continuity of life rather than the complete action of an Odyssey” (10).

Chapter 2, “Ulysses and Comic Theory,” is Bowen’s review of the origin of comedy and its applicability to Ulysses. He traces the relationship between comedy and ancient ritual, alluding to Francis Cornford, who in 1914 published The Origin of Attic Comedy. Developed around Frazer’s theory of religious rituals, the Cornford text, suggests Bowen, was a “milestone” in our understanding of the evolution of Greek and Western comic tradition. Along with Cornford, Bowen relies upon the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, who traced the “phallic processions”

and their association with the human reproductive cycle of life (17-18). The importance of these texts to the work here is their assertion that the earliest comedy opposed the “official and serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical culture,” thus offering a scholarly defense of the obscene and carnivalistic literary techniques employed by Joyce. Bowen quotes Bakhtin: “[The] carnival-grotesque form [serves to] consecrate inventive freedom, to permit the combination of a variety of different elements … to liberate from the prevailing point of view of the world … from all that is humdrum and universally accepted. This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook” … (19). Bowen cites “Circe” as the episode which “strips the terrifying (demons, and so forth) of its dreadful aspects, thus representing a kind of “new and joyous beginning” (19). The essence of his theory is that rituals and everyday adventures compose life, that sex and bodily functions are at the core of folk humor. Thus, Bloom’s ability to revel in the “warm sun,” his preoccupation with the bread van whose contents invoke a reference to the Lord’s Prayer, and his anticipation of eating the pork kidney from Dlugacz’s are simply Joyce’s celebration of an ancient and sanctioned literary technique. Particularly fascinating in Chapter 2 are the passages linking Aristotle’s “broader view of the function of comedy” to Ulysses ( including references to Lane Cooper’s An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy, James Feibleman’s In Praise of Comedy, and Richard Janko’s Aristotle on Comedy). As Bowen says, “ Just the certainty that Joyce would have loved the whole idea is reassurance enough of his comic affinity to make the effort worthwhile” (28). The effort, surprisingly, is worthwhile in this chapter, which concludes with Cooper’s eleven-point summary of Aristotle on comedy (and Bowen’s comments in italics). Many readers would agree that Joyce does indeed meet the Aristotelian “acid test” for comedy.

The third chapter, “Comic Narration,” addresses Joyce’s use (particularly in the last half of Ulysses) of a variety of parodies and imitations of styles in classical English and in the contemporary speech of early 20^th century Dublin. However, what too many critics have not discussed is that this narrative change is a transition from the serious to the comic. In this context, he provides his own distinction between humor and wit, defining humor (in the traditional) as the “universal, even if perhaps a bit bizarre, incongruities of human life,”

while wit is the product of “intellect, of language rather than action, of linguistic incongruities of human life” (46). Wit, then, takes center stage, beginning with the “Sirens” episode, which he terms the pivotal point of the novel. Though the comic style has not reached its culmination, we can see the tip of the iceberg in “Sirens.” In fact, he asserts that the only “genuinely sustained comic wit” in the first eleven chapters of Ulysses is the introduction of newspaper headlines in “Aeolus,” the episode in which Joyce declares an “all-out comic war on the pretensions of narrative method” (51). Bowen devotes the remainder of the third chapter to demonstrations of narrative technique as it defines the comedy in Joyce’s novel. We remember from Cooper’s earlier eleven criteria of Aristotelian comedy that “music and the marvelous” are essential; thus, Bowen is plentiful with his examples in “Sirens” (its lyrics “metamorphose into speech as the song “The Memory of the Dead” is used by the drinkers as an excuse combine patriotism and drinking) (55). He discusses “Cyclops” and its aggrandizements and Irish sentimentalism; “Nausicaa” and the sound of the cuckoo possibly echoing Bloom’s mental state; “Oxen of the Sun” in which the narrative parody translates dragons’ spears into bee stings; “Circe” (an obviously funny episode); “Eumaeus” and the three turds to be read as tarot cards; and “Ithaca” in which anagrams confuse by misnaming “Stoom” and “Blephen” (50-67). Because of its many excerpts from Ulysses episodes in which the comic narration drives the novel, this third chapter is most helpful in understanding the theories of Joycean comedy embraced and developed by Zack Bowen and other scholars.

Comic Predecessors

Bowen believes Joyce owes a tremendous debt to those before him who wrote comic pieces. Bowen states “he participated in a long standing comic tradition, which occasionally produces, consciously or not, remarkable similarities between Ulysses on one hand and The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Don Quixote, and Tristam Shandy on the other”(73). Bowen concentrates on these particular writers because he feels that they have only recently received the serious comparison with Joyce they deserve.

Bowen starts with Rabelais, whose works find much modern comparison with Ulysses. John Kidd’s Joyce’s Debt to Rabelais explored catalogues, giganticism, and cuckoldry in Joyce’s work. Joyce denied Rabelais influence, yet Bowen concentrates on that influence involving comedy in Ulysses. Bowen reminds us that comedy relies on common sense and the foolishness of human behavior seen through both the serious and frivolous sides of past events. This sounds like Joyce’s Booooook already.

Bowen writes that Rabelais “bridged the gap between short stories and the novel”(75). Rabelais combined seriousness of the epic with the ribald antics of short comedy to create a larger than life view of everyday existence. His characters also go through a search cycle involving academia, women, life and death and you can name many other ideas Joyce uses to apply here. One big similarity in their source material is the bible. The blasphemous and heretical work that Rabelais claimed was “harmless entertainment” remains exactly that, while “Joyce’s comic vision was to be ultimately closer to creating a dramatic work that would distance the author from his work than would a more solemn novel”(76-77). Joyce tried to distance himself with comedy, while Rabelaisian happily embraced objectivity and retained a passive detatchment from his comic audience. It seems for Joyce to be much harder to distance himself from the material.

Rabelais and Joyce both tackle marriage in their comedies. The cuckoldry explored by both writers mirrors that of Shakespeare, though Bowen believes Joyce’s writing to be much the tighter of the two. He goes on to state that the shifting structure throughout the novel is a constant source of comedy. The method of the narrative grows increasingly comic, adding subtly adding humor to a serious novel. Joyce begins with the traditional elements of comedy practiced by Rabelais and innovatively changes his narrative and comedy itself with the result.

Cervantes is a major figure in the conception of Ulysses. He was very interested in literature, like Stephen, but he also had the financial mindset of Bloom. The comparisons only start here. Cervantes compares Stephen and Bloom to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Bowen says: “Living life as if it were literature, is the essence of both Don Quixote and Ulysses”(84). Stephen and the Don have made too many wrong decisions and have read what they shouldn’t. Both have confused life with art. And both have delusions or hallucinations that plague them. Bowen lists passages from Portrait and Cervante’s work that are strikingly similar in their structure and meaning.

Bowen argues that Stephen has developed and can apply his daily life to art more successfully than in the previous novel. This causes the first of many parallels to Sancho/Bloom, his counterpart. Bowen says that Cervantes title character is “a deluded character, living intellectually in a bygone era, with a group of mundane, occasionally idiosyncratic, but also very realistic characters and events…”(87). This sounds like Stephen and Joyce simultaneously. Yet the delusional protagonists Stephen and the Don change their circumstances into magic and meaningful experiences.

Bloom is a modern Sancho Panza. Both are concerned with food and their wives. Both subconsciously want to rule and both want to make money. Yet both are fundamentally decent men who try hard to protect their associate/master/protégé.

Bloom goes into great detail, so I will save that for discussion and look at the third influence, Tristam Shandy. The comparisons here are more about technique. Both writers break from traditional narrative, both explore the cycle of life and death with stream-of-consciousness and combine music and its components with literary word play. But most importantly, both writers examine human experience on a level so serious and trivial at the same time that great comedy is created. The digressions of characters into interior monologue used by both authors thwart plot expectations and discombobulate

the reader. The humor comes from the reader’s confounded expectations, although some of us don’t always see the humor in that. Bowen believes that the ordinary events of Dublin on a day in 1904 are funny in themselves. The style Joyce obtained from Sterne is employed to create an entirely new way of looking at comedy in literature.

The Eye of the Beholder:

Reader Response and Dante

Bowen believes reader-response is a critical component to deciding what is comic and what is not. He thinks we should apply Aristotle’s approach to tragedy to the exploration of comedy, in terms of personal response. Bowen states his intentions to show that: “Ulysses, while it is a serious book and a major work of literary genius, is also a genuinely funny book…”(116). This is how he compares it to The Divine Comedy. Both are serious works that contain and indeed need humor to carry a purely human message.

Bowen talks about Dante’s form of comedy. Even his darkest moments are colored by the light of his coming salvation. Bowen says: “Throughout, Dante’s elaborate sense of design, of meticulous, balanced, numerical structure, reinforces the reader’s awareness of divine and inviolable purpose…The complexities of design in Ulysses rival Dante’s, but are complicated even more by the focus of the spiritual journey shifting between two journeyers, Bloom and Stephen”(119). Obviously Joyce was not the only one to compare these two works, but Bowen makes the parallels quite clear. The use of language differs in each work, however. In Joyce the loftier the language the funnier it is. Not so with Dante. His seriousness grows with the intensity of his language. Bowen believes the Dante figure is Stephen at the beginning of the novel, and Bloom by the end. This extraordinary parabola follows the path of Dante’s saga in great complexity and detail.

Circe is the Inferno. The strange and grotesque imagery and tormenting feelings are the same, but Circe is always funny, and acting in reader-response mode, we are uplifted at its end by Bloom taking on the Virgil role and caring for Stephen. Bowen finishes with Ithaca, but I don’t know what he’s talking about yet and cannot comment. Bowen does conclude speculating about Bloom: “…we know Bloom better than any other character in English literature. His very lack of heroism in the traditional sense urges us to regard his common decency”(131). Bloom is the ideal vehicle for reader-response because every reader can relate to him. That is crucial to Bowen’s argument.

Bloom is the universal person examined in Dante and in all of us, every day.