The Joycean Musical Narratives in Ulysses

The current research aims at analyzing the Joycean musical narratives particularly in Ulysses and to a lesser degree in Finnegans Wake. The novels show that a narrative is a sort of musical performance that implies the fusion of form and content. It is a common observation that both literary texts are nonsensical and kaleidoscopic narratives; however, the musical narratives make sense by virtue of the overlapping rules of syntax and vocabulary that are related to the fusion of form and content. The Joycean kaleidoscopic ‘Sirens’ is rendered in a dialogic form of writing that calls attention to the physicality of the text: its texture, sound, shape and colour. Kaleidoscopic narratives can be defined as an incongruous heap of narrative, stylistic and linguistic fragments that create an illuminating meaning. The momentum of meaning is delayed as the text falls apart, returning to narrative and linguistic debris. In the spaces between these fragments, a movement of another sort arises: not production but seduction. The audible pleasure of ‘Sirens’ implies that Joyce was favouring the emotional impact of writing over the structural conventions focused upon by critics. Sound is not merely a supplement to the narrative but one of the primary means by which Joyce intended his writing to be understood. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are a kaleidoscopic web of narratives, discourses, voices and styles that opposes representational art. Both illustrate the core feature of modernist literature as dynamic and intense.