In his works, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses
(1922), James Joyce demonstrates what he perceives to be the paralyzing effects of
those institutionalized religions that sit at the center of cultures. Drawing on Michel
Foucault's analysis of institutional dressage as well as his use of Jeremy Bentham's
Panopticon prison in Discipline and Punish (1981), this thesis argues that Joyce's
portrait of the Catholic Church's influence on Irish culture is his attempt to display its ubiquitous and inextricable power. In both works, Joyce focuses on the internalization of this power which emanates from the physical manifestations of the Church's presence, the strict tenets of its doctrine, and its concept of an omnipotent, omniscient God who, embodied in an individual's conscience, becomes the perfect "surveillant."
Tracing the influence of Catholic dressage on his first protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who unequivocally abandons the Catholic faith in A Portrait, Joyce reveals the overwhelming power that the Church held over the cultural consciousness of Ireland,
an influence rivaled solely by the British colonial powers. Similarly, in Ulysses, Joyce
introduces Leopold Bloom, the Jewish Other, who stands outside the institutional
structure of the Church and provides a removed but critical perspective on the Catholic
rituals and beliefs which, according to Joyce, were intricately woven into the Irish
Weltanschauung. Indeed, while Joyce's critique of the Church's power is clearly evident in the narrative of the novel, in a larger context this criticism is directed at the stifling effects of all institutional powers on individual consciousness.
Similarly, Foucault's cultural theories examine the intricacies of such power within a culture and their effect on the individual, who, in short, is a product of these elements. This thesis explores these dynamics in Joyce's works to further understand his position as one of the central novelists of the twentieth century. / Graduation date: 1997
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/34317 |
| Date | 02 May 1997 |
| Creators | Nelson, John C. M. |
| Contributors | Davison, Neil R. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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