Topic > Semantics and artistic perception in the protein episode of Ulysses

After witnessing the development of the young and unsophisticated Stephen Dedalus into the skeptical and scrupulous artist who concludes James Joyce's antecedent novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the His reappearance in Ulysses suggests that his intellectual journey is not yet over. His penultimate journal entry describes his declaration of intent regarding art: "I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the forge of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race." (Joyce 213) “the forge of Stephen's soul” encapsulates his realized artistic self-consciousness, a foundation for all his work; “the uncreated consciousness of his race” implies that he is providing an individual voice for the community into which he was born. Essentially, through his art, Stephen will use his individuality to create a consciousness for the population around him. The Proteus episode documents Stephen's return to Sandymount Beach and the recognition of his poetic vocation, as articulated in the opening lines: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned'? Get an original essay“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that, if not more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all the things I'm here to read, sea eggs and seaweed, the approaching tide, that rusty boot. Snot green, blue silver, rust: colored signs." (Joyce 37) Stephen's exploration of the material world in relation to his cognitive systems is a preliminary step towards his self-awareness as an artist. Through Proteus, he will examine the scene at the beach as field of signs, readily available for interpretation and association. Stephen contemplates the existence of the external world in reference to the theories of figures such as Aristotle and Jakob Böhme; however, as an artist, he intentionally perceives the beach through “reading” the signatures. An application of Ferdinand De Saussure's Course in General Linguistics can better emphasize the mechanical thinking that occurs in Stephen's mind and, in a broader sense, Joyce's employment of "internal monologue" as a narrative method Stephen's mental wanderings seem disoriented and erratic, his reflection on the sign responds to the poetic intention of the Portrait; Stephen is impulsively creating a consciousness for his race. Due to the semi-autobiographical nature of Joyce's previous novel, Stephen's artistic intention is also perceived as Joyce's intention: the analysis of linguistic systems and the exploration of the boundaries of such systems become, incidentally, expression creative. The Proteus episode is almost entirely presented through Stephen's mental activity. , a narrative technique labeled “internal monologue.” The method simultaneously conveys the content of Stephen's thoughts and the ingenuity of Joyce's craft. The dialogue that flows from Stephen's mind is characterized and supported by the “inescapable modality of the visible” (Joyce 37), an Aristotelian concept that considers how individuals see the material world through sensible qualities. Inevitability alludes to various aspects of the chapter, such as the inevitable flow of thoughts residing in Stephen's head, evident only through the monologue. Stephen's discernment of inevitability, however, is his assumption that the shore is eternal, both static and dynamic, based on the inevitability of his sight and hearing; he is aware of the relationship between space and time, reality and imagination. Despite this connection, to adequately understand the inevitability of his “thought through his eyes,” he must read the signatures of all things. The “thought through imy eyes,” therefore, is related to two concerns: first, that one's perceptions are themselves unreliable with respect to the independent reality from which they arise; and, secondly, that thoughts are constructed through an interpretation of the visual world are potentially false. Saussure postulates that “without moving our lips or tongue, we can speak to ourselves or mentally recite a selection of verses. Because we consider the words of our language as sound images...” (Saussure 853) As far as semiology is concerned, Joyce's story is a material interpretation of the mental verses that Stephen recites, as well as of the anxiety he harbors in the possibility of an external world. Consequently, in Saussure's study of semiotics, the external world exists, but its reality remains indistinct until language articulates it. Thus begins Stephen's attempt to consolidate his visual experience through language. When Stephen observes, “signatures of all the things that are here to read” (Joyce 37), he recognizes himself as a perceiver, first and foremost in a visual sense. This realization describes the thought process he will adopt, that of the world being "real" through the congruence of his eyes and his mind. The activity of reading indicates two things: firstly that the world exists before him as a text to be read and secondly that this way of perceiving is also artistic. The next list of things cluttering the beach, such as the approaching tide and a rusty boot, are saturated with meaning for Stephen, through association (water, for example, has negative connotations for Stephen, as it represents the drowning, amniotic fluid, etc.). The corresponding colors: “Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust”(Joyce 37) are both in reference to his imaginative perception and Aristotle's 'limit of diaphanousness', color as the determinant of the physical manifestation of a body. Contemplating a physical world with and without color forces Stephen to recall Aristotle's "diaphanousness," an attempt to visually fortify the signs he perceives. This demonstrates Stephen's maturation as an artist because he realizes that he must organize his thoughts into both imaginative and philosophical categories. The Proteus episode is Stephen's response to his poetic election, but also the awareness that his intellect lacks the structural basis of language in relation to visual perception. Stephen persistently distrusts his visual experience and decides to close his eyes, focusing instead on hearing. experience of his surroundings. As he listens to the sound his shoes make on the shells on the beach, the integration of an eternal world is tested through Stephen's ears. According to semiology, language is form while the word is substance; Stephen makes this distinction and attempts to materialize the world through sound. His monologue continues: “I am, one step at a time. A very short space of time through very short space times. Five, six: the Nacheinanders. Exactly: and this is the inevitable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell from a cliff over its base, I would ineluctably fall through the Nebeneinander!" (Joyce 37)Stephen distinguishes between the German terms, nacheinander(one after the other, successively) and nebeneinder(side by side, adjacent) and conceptualizes them as characteristic of time and space. The time-based, back-to-back perception inherent in auditory experience and self-experience is no different in kind from the side-by-side experience of the visual and sensory fields. Saussure provides a comparable semiotic explanation for auditory signifiers: “Their elements are presented in succession and form a chainthey are represented in writing and the spatial line of the graphic signs is replaced in succession over time.” (Saussure 855) The two modalities are also the sensorial channels of the two modes of the linguistic sign: writing and speech. . As Stephen's experiment demonstrates, modalities cannot operate independently: one cannot distinguish space without time or time without space. Likewise, reading and writing are not possible without a temporal capacity for visual comprehension of the textual surface, and hearing depends on a spatial proximity of a certain increment. Joyce, as the narrative style suggests, is more interested in revealing the relationship between the visual, spatial and written conditions of the sign. Once Stephen and Joyce's linguistic exercise is performed, artistic expression becomes more evident; Stephen rhythmically manipulates the language of his thoughts, while Joyce inserts unconventional literary devices. From the semiotic point of view, arbitrariness reigns almost entirely over the process of signification, arbitrary in that the signs have no natural connection with the meaning. For Saussure, onomatopoeias and interjections are considered objections to the rule of arbitrariness, in the sense that they are relatively motivated. Saussure explains: “Onomatopoeia could be used to demonstrate that the choice of signifier is not always arbitrary. But onomatopoeic formations are never organic elements of a linguistic system.” (Saussure 855) Interestingly, the Proteus chapter includes various moments of onomatopoeic moments that the narrative reproduces, such as the sound of Stephen's shoes on the sand: “Crush, crack, crick, crick” (Joyce 37) and when he recreates the bell ringing during mass: “Dringdring aspects of the sign and are potentially inserted due to the protean metaphor; since the figure of Proteus is transformable and flexible, perhaps Joyce's choice of motivated signs is deliberate. In the literary tradition, particularly in works that aspire to canonical recognition, the use of onomatopoeia is unusual. Although Joyce is known for breaking narrative boundaries, his emphasis on onomatopoeic moments serves a dual purpose: primarily as a means of merging visual and spatial cognitions in written form, and secondarily as a poetic insight into Stephen's rapidly developing mind . Because the narrative is given through internal monologue, onomatopoeic moments occur in Stephen's thoughts, and while it is difficult to rationalize whether they are coincidental, this is certainly Joyce's authorial intention. Stephen's poetic participation manifests itself most distinctly when his meditation on the inescapable mode of audio is further experienced by listening to the sea. His thoughts, in reaction to a physical entity, particularly the crash of the tide, adopt a poetic rhythm. The following two lines are mentally recited: “Will you not come to Sandymount, Madeline the mare?” (Joyce 37) To which Stephen then thinks, “The rhythm starts, you see. I heard. Acataleptic tetrameter of marching iambs. No, at a gallop: outline the mare.”(Joyce 37) Considers rhythm and poetic structure as elements within the audible mode. Stephen sees language in terms of reality, but he also seems to see the reality of language; the language itself gallops even as it describes the galloping mare. The monologue documents a poem he mentally makes up about a woman and intimacy, along with his struggle to find the paper. Through Stephen's interior monologue, Joyce explores the fundamental affectations of writing and its convoluted interaction with the parallel mode of the audible. After writing his poem, Stephen ponders the most fundamental of these properties: “Who watches me here? Who ever, somewhere,.