Mute Peal: The Queer Sonic Dynamics of Murmurs in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Jeremy Lakoff ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Tampa

     University of Tampa

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: James Joyce quarterly, ISSN 0021-4183, Vol. 60, Nº. 1-2, 2022-2023, págs. 59-73
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Joyce's use of free-indirect style in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man means that the narrative is filtered and distorted through Stephen's faltering and peculiar sensory perceptions. While Stephen's sight, touch, and smell have attracted scholarly attention, little has been said about the ways through which he hears his surroundings. This essay posits that sound, with its capacity to penetrate and resonate within the subject, plays an important role in shaping Stephen's sensorium and thus the novel's atmosphere. Moreover, Joyce's exploration of different registers of sound—especially the murmur—is a vehicle for mapping the flow and repression of Stephen's muffled and muted psychosexual energies, as well as those of the society around him. Uncertain, indistinct, and transgressive murmurs echo throughout the novel, calling into question the normative stability of the self, the clarity of desire, and the revelatory power of confession. Ultimately, this reading suggests a new axis along which to analyze literary representations of sensation: that of intensity, dynamics, and register.