Joyce’s Reading Bodies and the Kinesthetics of the Modernist Novel

Abstract

James Joyce famously described Ulysses as epic of human body, and many of his early and influential readers have obligingly emphasized significance of organs associated with each episode in Joyce's schemas. (1) Initial reviewers less enchanted with Joyce's opinions also focused on bodies and somatic responses, describing novel as indecent, vile, scatological, and an ordinary (Brooker 26-27). Fears of text's effects on bodies of readers contributed bans on Joyce's works, for as Katherine Mullin points out, a model of reading was assumed by most social purity campaigners. ... The theory that young people were drawn mimic what they read found constant reiteration (34-35). (2) In US obscenity case against Ulysses publishers Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, both prosecution and defense suggested that a text produces corporeal effects. The defense attorney, John Quinn, gave as exhibit physical response of Assistant District Attorney Joseph Forrester a reading of Nausicaa--Just look at him, still gasping for breath at conclusion of denunciation, his face distorted with rage--using somatic evidence argue that far from filling Forrester with lewd desires or sending him to arms of a whore, Ulysses deterred such behavior (Brooker 20). Quinn lost case, but US District Judge John Woolsey agreed with him when he overturned ban in 1933, claiming whilst in many places effect of Ulysses on reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend be (Court Lifts Ban). Ulysses was published in US because it was believed produce right sorts of effects on reading bodies. The bodily experiences of these early readers, however humorous in retrospect, indicates a sensitivity Joyce's new techniques in Ulysses. More recent critics, rejecting censoring tendencies of both emetic and aphrodisiac models, may also overlook ways Joyce's text depicts moving bodies and encourages somatic responses from readers. Poststructural theories postulate instability of text, author, and reader and thereby also discourage a generalized discussion of effects of texts on reading bodies, which are difficult substantiate and certainly not universal. Still, several textual strategies in Ulysses do engage kinesthetic potential of language, borrow a term common three influential fields in early twentieth century: physical culture, social purity, and psychological aesthetics. In physical culture, especially new art of modern dance, kinesthesia was theorized as a modern modality of perception; influential dance theorist Rudolph Laban defined it as the sense by which we perceive muscular effort, movement, and position in space (111). (3) Social purity's model of kinetic reading and mimicry and its effectiveness in banning Joyce and sparking his parodic humor have been detailed by Katherine Mullin. Kinesthetic responses art were also focus of contemporaneous field of psychological aesthetics, overlooked but significant aspect of modernist aesthetic theory. Studies in psychological aesthetics suggested that a kinesthetic sense enabled perception of traces of bodies, both artist's and subject's, in various art forms: record of brush stroke on canvas, impression of sculptor's hands on clay, or way a still figure in painting, photography, or sculpture seems captured in motion. Applied literature by Vernon Lee (1856-1935), psychological aesthetics examined impact of language on reading bodies and constitutes part of prehistory of reader-response criticism. Kinesthetic readings attend how a text encodes gestures and motions of characters, bodies that produce words, and movements required by speech. The aesthetic questions pondered by both Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in Ulysses echo contemporaneous debates in psychological aesthetics concerning body's role in perceiving art. …