The function of oriental allusions in James Joyce's Ulysses

This study examines the relevance of Oriental allusions to the meaning and art in James Joyce's Ulysses. It argues that Oriental allusions enhance the novel's philosophic implications and heighten its artistic effects. The dissertation explores implications that are suggested by the thoughts and actions of Joyce's principal characters, Bloom and Stephen, and analyzes effects that may be called "seriocomic," which are both serious and comic, ironic and sympathetic.

Oriental allusions are divided into three main categories, each alluding to a major theme centered on Bloom's and Stephen's individual quests or on their relationship with each other. The first category, the myth of the Orient, focuses on the two Dubliners' individual attempts to resolve their personal, familial, social, and religious problems by their connection with the mythic Orient. The second category, the karma and reincarnation principles, reinforces their father-son relationship by casting the paternity theme in HinduBuddhist terms. And the third category, the Buddha and Bodhisattva concepts, adds an important dimension to Bloom's and Stephen's spiritual quest for self-realization by showing their affinity with the Buddha and Bodhisattva respectively.

These implications are, however, balanced or undercut by the comic effects produced by, or associated with. Oriental allusions. These allusions present Ulysses as a comic epic that celebrates the norm, judges deviations from the norm critically, or takes a sympathetic view of those deviations, and provokes fun, laughter, and humor. The comic effects, thus, provide a healthy counterpart to the philosophic aspect of Oriental allusions, thereby producing an interplay, a balance, between the serious and the comic.