Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition

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2 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition This is a doubly brilliant book: set to become the standard account of Ulysses and the perfect exemplar so far of the richness that a cognitive scientific approach to literature can bring. Peter Stockwell, Professor of Literary Linguistics, University of Nottingham, UK Given Ulysses s perhaps unparalleled attention to the operations of the human mind, it is unsurprising that readers have been fascinated by the work s psychology. Nonetheless, there has been very little criticism that draws on recent research in cognitive science to examine thought and emotion in this novel. Taking up this research, Hogan sets out to expand our understanding of Ulysses, as well as our theoretical comprehension of literary imagination, character, critical realism, and related topics. He revises standard accounts of the novel s techniques of narration, offering new, cognitively based accounts of interior monologue and stream of consciousness. He also challenges common views about style in the novel. Moreover, Hogan extends his cognitive study to encompass the anticolonial and gender concerns so obviously important to Joyce s work. By integrating politics with cognition, Hogan simultaneously clarifies the nature of the political concerns in the novel and suggests new possibilities for cognitive literary criticism. Finally, through a combination of empirically based theorization and detailed textual analyses, Hogan seeks to make this notoriously difficult book more accessible to nonspecialists, while also using the book to advance our understanding of the human mind. Patrick Colm Hogan is a professor in the Department of English and the Program in Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut, USA.

3 Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Stylistics Edited by Michael Burke 1 Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind Michael Burke 2 Language, Ideology and Identity in Serial Killer Narratives Christiana Gregoriou 3 Beyond Cognitive Metaphor Theory Perspectives on Literary Metaphor Monika Fludernik 4 The Pragmatics of Literary Testimony Authenticity Effects in German Social Autobiographies Chantelle Warner 5 Analyzing Digital Fiction Edited by Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin, and Hans Kristian Rustad 6 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition Patrick Colm Hogan

4 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition Patrick Colm Hogan

5 First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Patrick Colm Hogan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hogan, Patrick Colm. Ulysses and the poetics of cognition / By Patrick Colm Hogan. pages cm. (Routledge Studies In Rhetoric And Stylistics ; #6) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Joyce, James, Ulysses. 2. Joyce, James, Criticism and interpretation. 3. Poetics History 20th century. 4. Cognition in literature. I. Title. PR6019.O9U dc23 ISBN: (hbk) ISBN: (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

6 In memory of Zack Bowen

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8 Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments ix xi Introduction: Ulysses and the Human Mind 1 1 Shame and Beauty: Telemachus and Nestor 13 2 Identity and Emotion: Proteus 33 3 Simulating Stories: Calypso, Lotus Eaters, and Scylla and Charybdis 53 4 Narration, Style, and Simulation: Hades, Aeolus, and Lestrygonians 82 5 Psychological Realism and Parallel Processing: From Wandering Rocks to Sirens Critical Realism and Parallel Narration: Cyclops and Nausicaa Style Unbound: Oxen of the Sun Metaphor, Realism, and Fantasy: Circe Narrational Duality, Loneliness, and Guilt: Eumaeus, Ithaca, and Penelope 184 Afterword: An Outline of Theoretical Concepts and Principles 209 Notes 223 References 231 Index 241

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10 List of Figures 3.1 A (Simplified) Reconstruction of Narrative Creation A (Further Simplified) Outline of Simulation A (Slightly Expanded, But Still Simplified) Reconstruction of Narrative Creation 215

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12 Acknowledgments An earlier version of chapter two was delivered at the Narrative(s) and the Shaping of Identity conference at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain, in October An earlier version of part of chapter three was delivered at the seminar on Immersion and the Storyworld, Oxford University, June I am grateful to the participants for their comments and questions. I am also grateful to Mike Groden for his expert guidance on the development of Ulysses, and to four anonymous referees and the series editor, Michael Burke, for their careful and helpful comments. Felisa Salvago-Keyes has expertly guided the manuscript through the editorial process. Finally, thanks to Margaret Breen who, as associate department head and acting department head, arranged my schedule to greatly facilitate the initial writing and final completion of this book.

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14 Introduction Ulysses and the Human Mind Writing in 1984, the influential critic and theorist Ralph Rader observed that Ulysses stands unchallenged as the greatest literary work in English of the twentieth century (340). Today, too, there are probably no other serious contenders for this distinction. Of course, many people would dispute the value of such a ranking. There are too many criteria by which one could evaluate works of literature. By some criteria, Ulysses may not succeed very well. Even so, the status of Ulysses is hardly arbitrary. It is connected with the wide range of criteria by which this novel exhibits unusual excellence. For example, critics have recently come to stress the place of Ulysses in postcolonial studies. Indeed, analyzing the novel in the context of anticolonial struggles has become almost commonplace. As I write, the current edition of the James Joyce Literary Supplement includes recent books treating Anti- Colonial Aesthetics in Joyce, Decolonizing Modernism (including Joyce), Empire and Joyce, as well as the relation of Irish Modernism to the Postcolonial (see Majumdar, Venegas, Szczeszak-Brewer, and Rubenstein, respectively). In keeping with this, Joyce s relation to colonialism, anticolonialism, and nationalism will be a recurring concern in the following pages. Treatments of Ulysses that emphasize its postcolonial credentials fall into the broader class of evaluative criticism that addresses the relation of the novel to our understanding of the real world. Though most critics would probably not phrase the idea in this way, the suggestion of such work is that we come to understand the real world (e.g., the world of colonialism) more fully through literary works. Commonly, that understanding has one of three foci. The first is social relations, particularly political relations. Thus not only colonialism and nationalism, but also racism, cultural identity, gender, and patriarchy, become central topics for both interpretation and literary scholarship. The second common focus for worldly treatments of a literary work (as Edward Said might have put it) is ethical. Since at least the time of Plato, literary works have been examined for their moral (or immoral) implications. The mention of morality might bring to mind simplistic treatments of the life lessons that are taught to us by a literary work or the corrupting and degrading influences a work might have on our moral natures.

15 2 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition However, the examination of a work s ethical implications is often complex and nuanced, particularly as practiced by moral philosophers. In the study of Ulysses, there is hardly a more perceptive critic than Martha Nussbaum. In her Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Nussbaum presents Ulysses as the apex of a moral ascent that involves not only ethical judgment and feeling, but a sense of real humanity, with all the messiness that involves. One may or may not agree with the details of Nussbaum s analysis. However, her integration of ethics and emotion, a sense of right and a feeling of human acceptance that goes beyond a condescending tolerance of other people s supposed faults, is valuable both as a theoretical formulation and as a way of understanding the finely drawn moral thought and feeling implicit in Ulysses. Indeed, as my appreciative comments suggest, Nussbaum s chapter on Joyce is one of the most important inspirations for the present study. It is worth pausing for a moment over the precise ethical and political purposes of Ulysses. I suspect Joyce did not set out primarily to convey a political or ethical message. However, it is clear he had political and ethical views that are necessarily woven into the fabric of the narrative necessarily, because they are manifestations of his own attitudes and interests. It should be obvious to even casual readers that the book criticizes (and analyzes) anti-semitism. As already suggested, it is also clearly anticolonialist. However, it is at the same time antinationalist. The anticolonialism and antinationalism may appear contradictory. However, they are perfectly consistent. There is a larger pattern here. Joyce was, as we will see, opposed to reducing individual complexity and value to any identity category. Thus he was necessarily opposed to both colonialism, with its assertion of the group identity of the colonizer, and nationalism, with its assertion of the group identity of the colonized. Anti-Semitism fits here as well, for it too is a doctrine that reduces individuals to identity categories. In keeping with this, Joyce also distrusted constraints on individual freedom freedom of thought, freedom of expression (including literary creation), and freedom of non-harmful, consensual action. The final point is particularly important in Ulysses. As Nussbaum recognized, Joyce set out to depict human ordinariness, and that ordinariness is often highly indecorous. It involves thoughts, desires, and actions that we all deny due to an excess of public shame. This is particularly true of sexual thoughts, desires, and actions. As we will see, Joyce provides many suggestions that his obvious self-representative in the novel, Stephen Dedalus, has homosexual feelings and may have engaged in homosexual acts. Leopold Bloom has androgynous fantasies and engages in masturbation, as do several of the women in the novel. Masturbation, though widespread, was routinely vilified at the time and was undoubtedly a source of deep shame for many people then and later. Joyce engages in a political project of very broad consequence when he seeks to destigmatize masturbation, as well as homosexuality, transvestism, and other vilified practices. Indeed, Joyce goes so far as to give Bloom coprophilic

16 Introduction 3 tendencies. It would seem that the purpose of this is in part to present the most extreme case possible. If even coprophilia is not a proper source of shame, then surely other forms of sexual desire are not. This sexual liberation aspect of Joyce s novel may seem banal now, after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. But there is a sense in which it is no less relevant now than at any time since it was published. As Pinkerton and colleagues note, masturbation remains one of the most stigmatized sexual behaviors (107), hidden in secrecy and shame (106) despite its prevalence. 1 More generally, JoAnn Wypijewski points out that mechanisms of surveillance and restraint... are not relics of a benighted past. The times are not auspicious, she argues, when judges dispute whether Americans have any right to sex (9). Alexander Cockburn goes still farther, noting that US sex offender registries doom three-quarters of a million people many of them convicted on trumpery charges to pale simulacra of real life. Others endure castration and open-ended incarceration (9). If one wishes to label Joyce s politics, then anarchism seems as good a label as any, as Manganiello has discussed at length. This is particularly true if one thinks of Emma Goldman as representative of anarchism. Her commitments were not only anticolonialist and antinationalist. They also involved a deep concern with sexual liberation. Returning to the general topic of interpretation and evaluation, we may think of the first area of worldly critical analysis and evaluation (politics) as bearing on systemic interrelations among people, whereas the second (ethics) concerns an individual s actions in the world. The third of the three areas in which we tend to evaluate fiction in relation to the real world is psychology, moving us from the individual s (ethical or unethical) behavior to his or her mind. Thus another common way of evaluating and analyzing a literary work is in terms of what it tells us about human mental operations. This too has been a prominent form of analysis in Joyce criticism. As one would expect, a great deal of this criticism has been psychoanalytic. Indeed, Jacques Lacan, perhaps the most important psychoanalytic writer after Freud, treated Joyce extensively. 2 In keeping with this, Lacanian approaches have been important in Joyce study, as have other approaches derived from Freud and post-freudians. 3 Somewhat surprisingly, however, there has been relatively little work on Joyce s great psychological novel in terms of recent cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific approaches. 4 Our understanding of human mental processes has advanced enormously in the past two or three decades. Much of this research converges strikingly with the insights of Joyce s novel. Yet Joyce critics have tended to ignore the technical literature in these new areas, and critics familiar with the new research have tended to bypass Joyce s work. In his widely read Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer popularized the idea that neuroscience and literature prominently including high modernist literature can be mutually illuminating. One of the main contentions of the following pages is that Ulysses can contribute powerfully to this mutual

17 4 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition illumination. As with ethical analysis, this should not be considered too narrowly. Joyce does not teach us a simple lesson regarding cognition or emotion nor does cognitive science simply convey some sentence-length insight into a novel. Rather, the integration of the two should add depth and nuance to our previous understanding on a range of topics. For example, in treating simulation, the cognitive research should bring to our attention subtle features of Joyce s narration and characterization in Ulysses. At the same time, the interwoven, detailed particulars of the novel should extend our understanding of the varieties and operations of simulation. The mention of Joyce s narration here recalls that not all critical analytic evaluations of Ulysses or any other work are worldly. Many such treatments are more properly aesthetic or literary. One common criterion for the critical analysis and evaluation of a work concerns the technical innovations developed in the work. Indeed, for several decades, assessments and interpretations of Ulysses focused on narrational and stylistic features, particularly interior monologue and stream of consciousness. The work of early critics on these topics was path breaking and deeply insightful. However, this is an area of formal literary study that is highly psychological. In consequence, it converges with worldly psychological concerns. As such, it too should benefit from recent advances in cognitive, affective, and neuroscientific research. Unfortunately, however, there has been little redevelopment of narratological and stylistic treatments of Ulysses in light of this research despite the broader interest of narratologists and stylisticians in the development of cognitive poetics. As these points suggest, Joyce s narratological and stylistic innovations were closely related to his psychological interests. Moreover, his psychological orientation dovetailed with his political and ethical commitments to individual human freedom and to the reduction of human shame over (putatively deviant) sexual desire and sexual behavior. All these areas literary form, character psychology, ethics, and politics are therefore particularly likely to be illuminated by recent psychological approaches. In addition, the complex, nuanced nature of Joyce s representations is itself likely to contribute to our understanding of related topics such as identity explored in a necessarily simplified form in experimental studies. The following chapters therefore draw on a range of research and theorization, from current understandings of imagination, memory, and emotion, to the serial and parallel operation of the mind, to empirically based accounts of social identity formation. They integrate this research with the detailed analysis of passages from Ulysses. The primary goal of this integration is to further our comprehension of Joyce s text. At the same time, however, such integration should advance our understanding of the theoretical topics involved. A project of this sort might proceed in one of two ways. A cognitive scientist might begin with cognitive categories, perhaps those of cognitive poetics. Those categories may themselves be organized in different ways.

18 Introduction 5 One alternative would be to take up a simple narratological schema along the following lines: author discourse (narration and plot) story (character and event) verbalization Cognitive poetics might lead us to consider, for example, simulation in connection with the author, because simulation is fundamental to authorial creation. Thus the opening chapter might treat simulation. It seems fairly clear that the simulation of Bloom in Calypso has some characteristics that differ from the simulation of Bloom in Circe. To cover these differences, this chapter would treat bits of the novel from different episodes. 5 This organizational structure might lead next to discourse, thus an examination of the ways in which cognitive and affective narratology may enhance our understanding of interior monologue and stream of consciousness. This too would range across episodes of the novel. Further chapters would turn to character psychology, verbal style, and other topics, also spanning large sections of the work. This approach has a sort of conceptual clarity in its favor. However, it is likely to be ineffective in examining the novel itself. Joyce has written a very intricate work in which there are many cognitive and affective concerns. These concerns are not uniformly present throughout the novel. Rather, one issue may be explored with particular intensity in Nestor whereas another is more significant in Circe. Organizing the analysis by reference to cognitive concepts would be likely to result in a fragmented understanding of the novel. No less significantly, whereas Joyce does highlight particular concerns in particular episodes, he also integrates various concerns. For example, inferential components of mental processing are never dissociated from emotional components in Joyce s depictions. Moreover, both are embedded in social and political contexts. One of the great benefits of literary study in contrast with empirical psychology is the relative ecological validity provided by such integration. 6 To treat simulation alone in one chapter, narration in a second, and so on would therefore fragment the novel in a second way. In addition to fragmenting the linear development of the work, it would fragment the mental and social integrations that make the work a compelling representation of human cognitive and affective processes as they operate in the world (as opposed to the artificial and selective conditions of the laboratory). In short, a concept-based organization risks losing (or at least obscuring) much of what is valuable in the cognitive study of a literary work both with respect to the work and with respect to cognitive and affective principles. For this reason, the following chapters have a different structure. They are guided primarily by Joyce s organization of the novel, proceeding episode by episode. They explore the key components of cognition and poetics: simulation, narration, processes of character thought (both inferential and

19 6 Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition affective), and idiolectal and emotional elements of style. Moreover, they tend to stress one or two central concepts in a chapter. But the interrelation of these components and the emphasis in any given chapter are guided first of all by the novel, by what is occurring in a particular episode. This does have the drawback that not all the material on a particular conceptual topic (e.g., cognitive principles of narration) appears in a single chapter. But it has a number of advantages. First, it allows the reader to follow the analysis in relation to the novel itself ideally rereading Joyce s episodes in connection with the relevant chapters (a process that would be impossible with the conceptual organization). Second, it permits the analysis to address the complex integration of different cognitive and affective elements and processes, thus preserving one of the most ecologically valuable features of literature its treatment of the multiple properties and interrelated operations of human thought and feeling. Third, it facilitates the exploration of Joyce s own developing complication of narration and style, as these change in interaction with one another. Finally, it enables our examination of the thematic purposes served by cognitive and affective features of the novel. Thematic concerns (regarding gender, nationalism, and so on) arise in different ways and with varying emphases in the novel s episodes. Moreover, the relation of these concerns to simulation, narration, style, and so on is not uniform. Organizing the work by reference to the episodes makes it much easier to treat these thematic purposes as they develop in the course of the novel. An important implication of the preceding points is that Joyce s psychology and politics have continued significance potentially contributing to cognitive and affective theories in part due to their accuracy, thus due to their realism. Put simply, there would be no point in relating Joyce s work to current research if the work did not reflect something about the human mind that may be further understood through cognitive and affective research. Similarly, there would be no force to Joyce s thematic concerns if they had no relation to the world we live in today. For example, Joyce suggests that men like Bloom and young women like Gerty and her friends do masturbate, that men like Bloom have androgynous fantasies, and so on. If this is simply untrue, then the political force of the representations would appear to be lost. Thus one main concern of the following pages is the degree to which Joyce s novel may be understood as an instance of realism. An important contention of the following analyses is that Joyce consistently adhered to what we may refer to as critical psychological realism. Simply put, realism, in this usage, is the representation of the story world in such a way as to enhance the reader s understanding of the real world. Psychological realism is a form of realism that seeks to enhance the reader s understanding of human mental processes. Critical realism is a form of realism that sets out to displace false beliefs that have been fostered by earlier works (e.g., by earlier novels). Critical psychological realism is crucial to Joyce s literary techniques (such as interior monologue), his psychological representations, and his ethical/ political themes bearing on such topics as group definition, sexuality, and

20 Introduction 7 shame. It is also bound up with his novel s relation to recent cognitive and affective science. Readers familiar with criticism on Joyce s novel may be perfectly happy to accept that Joyce is some sort of realist in the first half of the novel. However, they are likely to balk at the idea that Oxen of the Sun or Circe is realist in any way. One contention of the following analyses, however, is that these are no less critical psychological realist than any other episodes in the book. All that has happened in these episodes is that Joyce has come to realize that realism does not require a particular sort of style. In short, these episodes do show a change. But the change is not a matter of shifting from realism. It is a matter of re-understanding just what constitutes realism. The point is particularly important for the relation of these episodes to our understanding of human psychological processes. More exactly, my first chapter begins with thematic and basic psychological concerns because these figure prominently in the opening episodes of Joyce s work and because they provide a more reader-friendly introduction to this complex novel. The chapter particularly examines the topic of shame, first insofar as this is a function of group identity thus in relation to colonialism and second as it bears on sexuality. From here, the chapter turns to the thematic operation of style. Specifically, the chapter addresses the ways in which group shame is bound up with language, thus how verbal style may have a political function. This analysis in turn suggests the interconnectedness of the main concerns of the following chapters, as the discussion of identity, shame, and verbal style interweaves thematic issues, character psychology, and (cognitive) aesthetics. In connection with these various concerns, the chapter examines passages from the first and second episodes, Telemachus and Nestor. The second chapter takes up the issue of identity more systematically. It begins with the psychology of group identity, distinguishing types of group identity along with their various emotional and cognitive sources and consequences. The second part of the chapter turns from group identity to individual identity. Both parts present broad, theoretical accounts, tailored in part to Joyce, but also making more general claims. Here, as in the first chapter, there are two reasons for this particular focus. First, it is in general easier for readers to deal with themes and character psychology than formal issues (we all have much more practice in the first and second than the third). Therefore, themes and character psychology allow an easier entrance into the novel. Second, as to the issues of identity in particular, the chapter focuses on the third episode of Ulysses Proteus. Named for the self-transforming Greek deity, the episode is systematically concerned with identity. The third chapter continues the focus on character psychology but turns to a more narrowly literary topic current research on imagination or, as it is commonly called, simulation. Simulation is the ordinary process of tracing out hypothetical or counterfactual trajectories of actions or events