Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Scroggins, Mark

Abstract

This dissertation examines the process of “poetic memory” in James Joyce’s Ulysses, a term chosen by Italian philologist Gian Biagio Conte to describe allusive processes in the poetry of classical texts, specifically the epic. Conte examines and classifies the epic codes and norms residing within and constituting the classical epic genre. These change with each successive epic according to the author’s culture. The allusive process enables an author’s dialogue with his or her predecessors, which has implications for the establishment of textual authority. By applying Conte’s system of epic codes and norms toward a reading of Ulysses, it is possible to interrogate the novel and assess how it situates itself within the epic tradition. In Ulysses, Joyce responds to and revises the epic tradition through his appropriation and modification of works by classical, medieval and Renaissance authors. He writes from the advantage of doing so in the early twentieth century, at a point in history with a wide range of literary material available to it. Through Ulysses’ Homeric frame and intricate allusions, Joyce creates a somatic text, one that appropriates the textual somatic components of the Commedia and Gargantua and Pantagruel. In appropriating and revising elements of these somatic sites, as well as classical allusions, Joyce creates a foundational Irish epic, one that ultimately questions and even parodies statements of authority.

Extent

198 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00004687

Format

pdf

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