Sebastian D.G. Knowles
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056920
- eISBN:
- 9780813053691
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056920.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter 2 argues that all of Joyce pushes the envelope, moving beyond itself, refusing to end. It makes the central claim of the book that a love of the “a-telic,” or that which has no ending ...
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Chapter 2 argues that all of Joyce pushes the envelope, moving beyond itself, refusing to end. It makes the central claim of the book that a love of the “a-telic,” or that which has no ending (telos), is the drive that makes the Joycean free. Each modernist object in Joyce has a four-dimensional life (the fourth dimension being time): this chapter focuses on three postage stamps referred to in the “Ithaca” section of Ulysses by way of example. By entering the world of infinite possibility that these philatelic objects open into, we fly by the nets of the everyday (like Stephen Dedalus), escape paralysis (unlike the characters in Dubliners), and soar towards the sun (like Icarus) to achieve freedom.Less
Chapter 2 argues that all of Joyce pushes the envelope, moving beyond itself, refusing to end. It makes the central claim of the book that a love of the “a-telic,” or that which has no ending (telos), is the drive that makes the Joycean free. Each modernist object in Joyce has a four-dimensional life (the fourth dimension being time): this chapter focuses on three postage stamps referred to in the “Ithaca” section of Ulysses by way of example. By entering the world of infinite possibility that these philatelic objects open into, we fly by the nets of the everyday (like Stephen Dedalus), escape paralysis (unlike the characters in Dubliners), and soar towards the sun (like Icarus) to achieve freedom.
