The Aesthetic of Transgression: Love and Limits in the Early Work of James Joyce

• Angus McFadzean ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Oxford

     University of Oxford

     Oxford District, Reino Unido

     
• Localización: James Joyce quarterly, ISSN 0021-4183, Vol. 60, Nº. 1-2, 2022-2023, págs. 17-38
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • This essay draws on Georges Bataille's notion of "transgression" to argue for a distinctive "aesthetic of transgression" in Joyce's writing. Bataille theorizes a dialectical transgression where the punishment it calls forth operates as a regulatory force, reinstituting the taboo and apparently cancelling the force of transgression. Joyce initially understands transgression non-dialectically, as the violation of a preexisting taboo punishable by the law, but his early writing gradually overcomes this by developing a dialectical transgression—an act of going beyond the limit that is simultaneously recontained within the limit. Joyce pursues this by thinking through the "allegory of love" he inherits from medieval and early modern poetry. He reconceives the allegory into scenes of incompletely disclosed erotic encounters: they represent acts of transgression and fail to represent them adequately, mystifying transgression even as it is being revealed. Joyce's transition to this more complex understanding of transgression is read into "A Portrait of the Artist," the relationship with Emma in Stephen Hero, and the incompletely disclosed erotic encounter in chapter XXV of Stephen Hero. Some examples are given of how scenes of transgressive sexuality are represented in Ulysses. The persistence of such scenes is used to argue for a distinctive aesthetics of transgression in Joyce's writing.