Discoveries, Voiceovers, and Greek Poetry: the Colonization of Lands, Languages, and Literatures in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red

Abstract

What does an Irish modernist have in common with a contemporary Canadian classicist? The present paper attempts an unlikely comparison to bring out previously unnoticed facets of meaning by analyzing James Joyce`s Ulysses (1922) and Anne Carson`s Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998) together. While Joyce and Carson write at different times and in different places, I suggest that they are also remarkably similar. First, both of these authors can be said to have re-invented the genre of the novel in the two aforementioned works. Second, they both set themselves the task of re-writing a Greek text, in Joyce`s case Homer`s Odyssey, in Carson`s case Stesichoros`s Geryoneis, transferring it to their own present reality. The focus of the article is to read Ulysses and Autobiography of Red together in light of their engagement with colonialism. This concept is central to both novels, as literary critics have noted. However, rather than examining the concept in the traditional sense, I use it as a platform to examine the roles that sociolinguistic colonialism, and what I call literary colonialism, play in these two innovative and groundbreaking novels. Finally, I analyze the ways in which these authors position themselves against the tradition. Comparing works by Carson and Joyce allows me to arrive at conclusions that transcend their time and apply to humanity in general.