James Joyce Comparison-Michelle Wolff

In an excerpt from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, polysemy is a key ingredient to his style of writing and connects to some of the other texts we have read so far this year. James Joyce writes in an excerpt from Finnegan’s Wake:

“…nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac…” (Joyce 3).

Joyce uses polysemy with the use of the word “venissoon.” The word “venissoon,” although not an actual word in the English dictionary has multiple meanings that be interpreted in this passage. First off, I had no idea what Joyce was trying to say when I first read this. But, when I read it again and a little faster, I could see how the word “venissoon,” when read fast, could sound like “very soon,” which happens to make sense in the sentence. Also the word “venison” which is a type of meat shares a very similar spelling to Joyce’s word. Another style Joyce implements in his work is the combining on words in sentences.  In this passage, “avoice” if a combination of the two words, “a” and “voice.” Also it could perhaps be said that “venissoon” could be interpreted as a combination of the words “very” and “soon.”

Although Joyce can be considered unique in his style, the polysemy in Lewis Carroll’s story, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass can be compared to his work. At one point in Carroll’s story, he writes:

“…for she felt sure she would catch a bad cold if she did not get dry very soon. At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them, called out ‘Ahem!’ said the Mouse with an important air, ‘air you all ready? This is the driest thing I know.”

 We can see the parallels between Joyce and Carroll’s works. Although, when I first read Carroll’s text, it was a much easier text to comprehend than that of Joyce’s, much due to the overall style of language. Carroll used a few “wacky” words here and there, but for the most part he kept an overall language that was easy to follow as I read on. Even though they do have this difference, the two texts share a common use of polysemy. In the example from The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, the use of the double meaning is shown greatly. Here in this passage, Carroll plays with the meanings of the word “dry.” This excerpt takes place during the “Caucus Race” which is a race where the participants are literally wet and by the end of the race they are dry. So, Alice is described as needing to be dry as in the opposite of wet, while the Mouse is reading a text about William the Conqueror and saying that the text he is reading is very dry as in boring.

            Also Joyce’s work much like Carroll’s, uses whimsical language such as “tauftauf thuartpeatrick.” It is fascinating to take pieces like Joyce and Carroll’s, which are considered very different and be able to pick out similarities between them.