Joyce's Modernist Allegory: Ulysses and the History of the Novel »

In Joyce s Modernist Allegory Stephen Sicari suggests that James Joyce s famous experiments with style and technique throughout Ulysses constitute a series of attempts to find a language adequate to his purposes—a language capable of representing an ideal of behavior for the modern world. Addressing Joyce s use of lucid and powerful naturalistic prose in the opening episodes of Ulysses only to abandon such writing as insufficient to his aims, Sicari underlines Joyce s conviction that the novel, constrained by space and time, can end only in death. As a result Joyce begins to play with language, exposing the limitations of the novel as a genre and opening up new possibilities for prose fiction. In this volume Sicari shows how, episode by episode, Joyce tests style after style, voice after voice, in search of an effective way to present his Christian ideal of behavior.

Sicari traces the development of Joyce s writing from novel through epic to what Sicari calls "modernist allegory," a kind of writing based on ancient and medieval forms of allegory yet suited to modern concerns. He connects Joyce to the tradition of Christian allegory, inaugurated by Saint Paul and developed by Dante, that sought to represent ideals as based on the Christ event. Sicari contends that Joyce s Christian allegory establishes a spiritual mode of thought for a harsh, literal-minded modern age.

About the Author:
Stephen Sicari is an associate professor of English and chair of the English Department at St. John s University in New York City. The author of Pound s Epic Ambition: Dante and the Modern World, he has written extensively on modernist literature. Sicari holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Library Journal

This well-argued and thoroughly researched work adds a new facet to Ulysses scholarship. Building on his previous work (Pound's Epic Ambition: Dante and the Modern World), Sicari uses Dante's Divine Comedy to find a new method with which to analyze Joyce's complex work. By tracing Joyce's concept of Ulysses to Dante's Canto 26 rather than Homer's Odyssey, he argues that Joyce is distrustful of language's ability to depict truth and instead sees a need for allegory (theological, not poetical) to find the ideal. Sicari ably demonstrates how viewing the work as a modernist allegory provides the reading that resolves contradictions in plot and style. He also argues that Joyce uses the experimental episodes to transform Bloom's weakness into a heroic trait by changing how the reader views his passivity. In this modernist allegory, the reader is instructed to overcome cultural skepticism and find an ideal within Bloom's Christlike compassion and forgiveness. Intriguing but densely argued, this is recommended for academic libraries only. Paolina Taglienti, Long Island Univ .Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.