Myth and Identity in Joyce's Fiction: Disentangling the Image

Abstract

Literary Revival of turn-of-the-century Dublin was much concerned with expressing Irish aspirations through heroes. Finn and Cuchullain supplied imaginatively what Ireland had not been able to achieve reality: an Irish hero who vanquished all foes. Joyce's contempt for this form of self-consolation is well documented. In his broadside The Holy Office he parodies Yeats as he declares that he, Joyce, must not accounted be/One of that mumming company. Stephen of Stephen Hero devotes much energy to debunking Revival. What is perhaps less well known is that Joyce's initial contempt gave way to a profound understanding of psychology of Revival and of uses of myth creation of identity. latter is theme of Portrait, and, indeed, it is theme of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake as well. Joyce's realization, or disentangling (to use Stephen's word), of this theme came about as he rewrote Stephen Hero into Portrait of Artist as a Young Man. In his earliest attempt at self-portraiture, an essay entitled A Portrait of Artist, Joyce portrays his young self as a contrary kind of hero, one who, rather than embodying aspirations of culture, defies cultural pressures and stands alone. He contrasts himself with young nationalists who in their relations among themselves and towards their superiors . . . displayed a nervous . . . and a very English liberalism (61-62), who respond with enthusiasm to poetry of Thomas Davis, and to whom the memory of [Terence] McManus [an advocate of anti-English violence] was hardly less revered than that of Cardinal (62). Cullen had discouraged aggressive nationalism and, as Archbishop of Dublin, had forbade a funeral ceremony for McManus to be held any church his diocese (62n.). In this early attempt at self-definition it is Catholic nationalists who provide a position of popular error against which Joyce is able to figure himself as lone hero. young artist, contrast to these self-contradictory peers, seeks high ground: Let pack of enmities come tumbling after him and sniffing to highlands after their game; there was his ground: and he flung them disdain from flashing antlers. (61) In segment of Stephen Hero which has survived, Joyce adds Celtic Revival notions of Douglas Hyde to this erroneous orthodoxy. Stephen's pronouncements on subject are frequent and often quite heated. He argues about it with Madden, a character modeled upon Joyce's university friend George Clancy: [Madden:] - But really our peasant has nothing to gain from English literature. * Rubbish! * Modern at least. You yourself are always railing . . . * English is medium of Continent. * We want an Irish Ireland. * It seems to me you do not care what banality a man expresses so long as he expresses it Irish. * I do not entirely agree with your modern notions. We want to have nothing of this English civilization. * But civilization of which you speak is not English - it is Aryan. modern notions are not English; they point way of Aryan civilization. * You want our peasants to ape gross materialism of Yorkshire peasant? * One would imagine country was inhabited by cherubim. Damme if I see much difference peasants: they all seem to me as like one another as a peascod is like another peascod. Yorkshireman is perhaps better fed. (54) Clancy was both an active member of Hyde's Gaelic League and a friend of Michael Cusack, to whom he introduced Joyce. Richard Ellmann quotes an 1884 article of Cusack's which deplores effects of foreign and hostile forces and pernicious influence of hated and hitherto dominant race (61). So Madden is expressing kind of furious nationalism that formed a conspicuous part of intellectual climate of turn-of-the-century Dublin. …