JOYCE´S ANSWER TO PHILOSOPHY: WRITING THE DEMATERIALIZING OBJECT
In: Joyce, "Penelope" and the Body
Author:
CHRISTINE VAN BOHEEMEN-SAAF
CHRISTINE VAN BOHEEMEN-SAAF
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Abstract
“Penelope” may be understood as Joyce´s response to Western philosophy and its dematerialization of the body. Not just an “earth goddess” but the fertility of nature, the figure of Molly Bloom on the chamberpot is here read as a redemptive objectification of the lost primal object. Thus Joyce´s text may demonstrate a typically modern anxiety about the dissolution of our bond to Mother Nature. In a reading of the difference between Dickens’s Flora Finching and Joyce´s Molly, the particular modernity of Joyce´s rendering is also explored.