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."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Derrida, Jaques. "Of Grammatology." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
• De Saussure, Ferdinand. "Course in General Linguistics." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Leitch, Vincent B. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
• Joyce, James. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." The Portable James Joyce. Ed. Levin, Harry. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 1967.
• Joyce, James. "The Boarding House." The Portable James Joyce. Ed. Levin, Harry. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 1967.

Visitors who viewed this Analytical Essay also liked these:

• Book Review # 108001 : "Gender Relations in James Joyce's "The Dead"
• Analytical Essay # 64025 : "James Joyce's "The Dead"
• Book Review # 120448 : "James Joyce's "The Dead"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: