Narcissism is often evoked in discussions of James Joyce and his characters, yet no critical consenus has been reached as to what the narcissistic condition entails, or whether a distinction can be made between the narcissism of Joyce the author and the narcissism of his characters. Indeed, narcissism has been a critical chimera for centuries, plaguing all disciplines that attempt to define the process of self-formation and self-recognition. A close reading of Ovid's myth of Narcissus and Echo reveals a complex of thematic motifs and narrative modes that are a crucial starting point for a study of narcissism. Like Ovid, Joyce demonstrates an understanding of the semiotic nature of the self--that it is fluid rather than fixed. In this way both authors provide us with a model of the self as myth, a work-in-progress. This assumption links Ovid's and Joyce's depiction of the narcissistic condition with the twentieth-century debate between the two dominant models of self: the psychoanalytic, which posits the self as fixed or essential, and the phenomenologic, which posits the self as shifting and situational. Theories on narcissism have undergone a related paradigmatic shift in the past thirty years from the Freudian view of narcissism as a temporal, pathological phenomenon of self-development, to a view proposed by analysts such as Jacques Lacan, Heinz Kohut, and Julia Kristeva of narcissism as an atemporal, normative endo-psychic structure. Evidence of this reconfiguration can be found in recent critical theories that consider the seminal role of narcissism in the reading process and in contemporary social dynamics. Joyce's work also demonstrates an awareness of the mythic, psychoanalytic, philosophical, sociological, and political implications of narcissistic behavior in all his major works of fiction, from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake. Working from an assumption that the self is fundamentally fictional and fragmented, Joyce depicts the creative potential of narcissism as well as its limitations. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-01, Section: A, page: 0090. / Major Professor: Stanley E. Gontarski. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77091 |
| Creators | Wheatley-Lovoy, Cynthia Drew |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 241 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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