https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/16024
Title: | The Penman and Postman Dynamic in Joyce 喬伊斯作品裡書寫者與郵差的動態關係 |
Authors: | Tseng, Li-ling | Keywords: | 書寫之筆;郵件;聯繫;辯證;《畫像》;《尤利西斯》;《芬尼根守靈記》;the pen;the post;the letter(s);affiliation;dialectics;A Portrait;Ulysses;Finnegans Wake | Issue Date: | 2005 | Journal Issue: | 14 | Start page/Pages: | 1-20 | Source: | NTU Studies in Language and Literature | Abstract: | Since Gabriel’s announcement that “Here I am as right as the mail,” Joyce has been preoccupied with the dynamic polyvalence contained in Gabriel’s statement. The right/write and mail/male interchange and permutation present themselves in Joyce’s engaging portraits of such writing-and-righting males as Stephen Dedalus, of the righting males such as Blazes Boylan and the Citizen, of the problematic (thus not right?) males such as Bloom, and of the mail-writing, philandering Bloom, alias Henry Flower. Joyce is keen on exploring and exploiting the readily transgressed boundaries in these two dyads. Especially prominent in the symbolic patrilineage building of the self-styled artist of Stephen Dedalus and the plotting, letter-writing Bloom, there emerges the complicated affiliation between the writing pen-man and the not-so-right post-man in Ulysses. Foreshadowing the sibling rivalry between Shem and Shaun in Finnegans Wake, the penman-postman affiliation in Ulysses is imbricated with serious dialectics. My paper proposes to examine how the penman and postman roles get identified in the first place (for this purpose, I need to go back to A Portrait) and what is involved and at stake in their responsibilities, with a purpose to enact the dialectics in these two roles. I would like to demonstrate that while having a penman as vocation in mind, Stephen must settle with being a postman first, literally hand-carrying Deasy’s letter on his behalf. Assuming this role entails surrendering the authorship (e.g. “The letter is not mine” U7.530) which he has been struggling to consolidate, making it inevitable that he becomes the “Bullockbefriending bard.” This suggests that carrying someone else’s letter threatens his own integrity as the penman proper. Also carrying a (writ-/right-ing) pen-man. On the other hand, his being (mis-)named variously and owning aliases—in mock-Odyssean manner—throughout the text (L.Boom being the ultimate misnomer) concur with his ability to freely create and coin new words, exercising the ability of a potential penman. It is then demonstrated in Ulysses that between the two roles of a penman and a postman, it is easy for one to slip into the other and these two roles are more often than not reinscribed with each other. That is to say, there is always an “other” to one. The process of searching for the symbolic father in Ulysses affiliates the father-son pair of Bloom and Stephen, and thereby configuring and consolidating the entanglement of the postman and the penman. The postman-penman affiliation and all the desire and tension that are involved therewith will constitute the odyssey (home-departing, wandering, and home-returning) of the pen, the letter, and the post, a journey which began in A Portrait, continues in Ulysses, and arrives at in Finnegans Wake. 本文擬追溯喬伊斯作品裡「書寫者」與「郵差」這二個後來在《芬尼根守靈記》極為突顯的角色形成之源起。於《畫像》裡就已身懷作家夢的史蒂芬,於《尤利西斯》裡小說安排他先擔任信差的任務,由於替狄西校長致報社的信擔任遞送差役,史蒂芬必得先犧牲其身為作家的天職,此舉似暗示身上懷有他人信件與成為作家這回事互為齟齬。而布魯姆成天身上藏有與筆友通信的信件,此舉亦推翻他有可能成為作家的身份,因為他與筆友的通信使用假名, 他的作者權可說已被剝奪,充其量是個名符其實的信差而已。但另一方面,布魯姆在《尤》裡又具有多重的身份,連名字也有許多變化,這又與他擅於創造新字的能力相通,証明他也有成為作家的潛力。在《尤》裡,這二種角色常遊移於小說二位男主角身上,布魯姆、史蒂芬二人在小說裡最後具有象徵的父子關係,這也暗示寫作者與郵差二種角色身份密切的聯繫,也就是說,在《芬尼根守靈記》裡這二者緊密的關係早已在《畫像》與《尤》裡就已鋪陳完畢。 |
URI: | http://ntur.lib.ntu.edu.tw//handle/246246/281450 http://ntur.lib.ntu.edu.tw/bitstream/246246/281450/1/0014_200509_1.pdf |
Appears in Collections: | 外國語文學系 |
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0014_200509_1.pdf | 1.08 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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