Blooms Feline Discourse : A Semiotic Tension

Abstract

More than two generations have passed since the publication of Ulysses (1922) , and the

critics and scholars have well learned to live in its aftermath with arduous scholarships

and interpretations. The initial din and dust appear to have settled. Yet it seems that we

are now more accustomedto the singularities of the Joycean text than we have cleared its haunting enigma. Let us take an example:But the greatest affront of all is the arrangement of the book, Ulysses is a chaos. All the conγentions

of organized prose which have grown with our race and out of our racial consciousness

which have been reverently handed on by the masters with such improγements as they have been

able to make, have been cast aside as somuch dross. Quotation marks for conπl'ventiona1 passages

are omitted; punctuation fo 이llows new ·and unknown rules; sentences begin and forget to end;

chapters have no apparent relation to one another, andneither numbers nor titles; and one

chapter, the last, runs to 42 pages (25, 000 words) with not a single punctuation of any kind...