I’ve heard that the Nausicaa chapter was supposed to be a parody of trashy romance novels of the day (the sort Molly Bloom likes to to read). Still some beautiful writing (the Roman candles!!)
Re: the Calvin and Hobbes strip -- I also see something in the way children learn and interact with language. When you or I (or, I, at the very least) hear the word "sluggish" used to describe someone, I don't imagine a slug, despite obviously knowing that the word's meaning is derived from analogy to the animal. Rather, the image in my head is not really an image at all, but a hazy kind of understanding of what is meant. Our minds are so full of signifiers and shortcuts, we lose an immediacy that there is there in the language we use.
For Calvin, a child, to hear his mother call him sluggish evokes a very distinct thought of slugs. In a comic that is so much about the imaginative power of children, this particular strip is kind of a peak into how that imaginative process works, and the places a child's imagination can take them.
It's been a while since I read Ulysses, but I think you should definitely give into the urge to read the parts of it that invite a conventional reading conventionally. Bloom's first few chapters and Nausicaa in particular jump out, though there are moments throughout if you're open to them. At least some of the novel's stylistic bravura is clearing a path to approach those tender or even sentimental aspects of what 'the novel' has always done, at a moment in history Joyce felt he could no longer do so innocently or straightforwardly. He wants to be bold, daring, and original, but he also wants to write a novel about regular-ass people in Dublin.
What you shouldn't do is give into the urge to give Buck Mulligan his drinking money. Dude's a terror, the type of friend who'll leave you to get the arse kicked off of you by the English.
Why are you writing an essay about Ulysses?
I’ve heard that the Nausicaa chapter was supposed to be a parody of trashy romance novels of the day (the sort Molly Bloom likes to to read). Still some beautiful writing (the Roman candles!!)
Re: the Calvin and Hobbes strip -- I also see something in the way children learn and interact with language. When you or I (or, I, at the very least) hear the word "sluggish" used to describe someone, I don't imagine a slug, despite obviously knowing that the word's meaning is derived from analogy to the animal. Rather, the image in my head is not really an image at all, but a hazy kind of understanding of what is meant. Our minds are so full of signifiers and shortcuts, we lose an immediacy that there is there in the language we use.
For Calvin, a child, to hear his mother call him sluggish evokes a very distinct thought of slugs. In a comic that is so much about the imaginative power of children, this particular strip is kind of a peak into how that imaginative process works, and the places a child's imagination can take them.
Of course, it also a fun play of Kafka.
It's been a while since I read Ulysses, but I think you should definitely give into the urge to read the parts of it that invite a conventional reading conventionally. Bloom's first few chapters and Nausicaa in particular jump out, though there are moments throughout if you're open to them. At least some of the novel's stylistic bravura is clearing a path to approach those tender or even sentimental aspects of what 'the novel' has always done, at a moment in history Joyce felt he could no longer do so innocently or straightforwardly. He wants to be bold, daring, and original, but he also wants to write a novel about regular-ass people in Dublin.
What you shouldn't do is give into the urge to give Buck Mulligan his drinking money. Dude's a terror, the type of friend who'll leave you to get the arse kicked off of you by the English.