The Challenge of Taking Sides: Virtue as Corruption in Joyce’s Ulysses

Abstract

This article concerns the presence of obscene contents in Ulysses and the embarrassment that such material has caused among its readers. It dwells more specifically on the thirteenth episode of the novel, “Nausicaa”. After recapitulating the main arguments put forward by scholars in response to the most unpalatable and morally touchy aspects of the episode, I propose to concentrate on the internal contradictions elicited by the various discourses woven together in it. I argue that the narrative apparatus set up by the author forces one to occupy unstable positions and that this instability is what has led to the different critical receptions of Joyce’s text. By exposing the reader to contradictory imperatives, this narrative apparatus aims at conflating virtue and vice into a single entity.

Keywords

• interface
• James Joyce
• narrative apparatus
• “Nausicaa
• ” moral scandal
• obscenity