An analysis of James Joyce's search for an alternate source of meaning in his works "The Boarding House" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."
Written in 2008; 2,376 words; 4 sources; MLA; $ 72.95
Paper Summary:
This paper uses examples from James Joyce's "The Boarding House" and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" to argue that the poet rejected the idea of meaning produced by structures and instead pointed the way towards an infinite number of interpretations rooted in subjectivity. The writer explains the focus on meaning through empiricism that was prevalent in Joyce's time, and how Joyce, on the other hand, through his writing establishes that while the self indeed only marks the intersection of various social tensions, it exists as the ultimate and mutable source of meaning. The paper concludes that if Joyce is correct and there is no truth but the subjective, then the self is the ultimate guarantor of meaning and art the tool by which it is uncovered.
From the Paper:
"Meaning and a sense of self are central to the human existence in order to place the self in context with the environment. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, we are trapped through language as integral parts of our environment or social system, within which we contextualize our selves. It follows that the structure of language produces reality, and timeless cultural structures create the individual, illusory sense of self; a self that remains stagnant because it cannot escape its place within its environment. Both the self and the possibility of change are therefore illusions, because meaning only stems from structures. This is the very idea at the heart of structuralism and similarly modernism which dominated Western thought during Joyce's time."
We have thousands of high-quality term papers, research papers, essays, book reports and dissertations on every topic. At AcaDemon, you can download those term papers to help you write yours! You can be sure that the term paper, essay, book report or research paper you download are top-quality, competitively priced and high-level work.
This Free Term Paper Abstract is a part of our Term Paper Library.Here you can purchase research papers, examples of essays, academic dissertations, articles, notes, analytical papers, book reports, stories and poems. We have thousands of persuasive, point-of-view, narrative, critical, compare and contrast and other types of essays in our Library. You can also find here Term papers on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Essays on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Research papers on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Student papers on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Book reports on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Dissertation on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Thesis on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Summary of paper on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning", Articles written on "James Joyce and the Ambiguity of Meaning".
Look for more research papers, essays and book reports on