Polysemy is when a word or phrase has more than one possible meaning. This was used a lot in Alice in Wonderland and Lear's nonsense poems. Joyce actually employs this same technique when he is writing Finnegans Way, but takes it to another level. Joyce makes up words that are phonetically real words using parts of different words to spell them.
| North Armorica on this side the scraggy | 5 |
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war:
Polysemy is seen above
| The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner- | 15 |
| ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur- | 16 |
| nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later | 17 |
on life down through all christian minstrelsy.
The fall seems to be addressing a number of things. It would mean the fall of a business man if the word wallstrait were to mean wall street and describing the man to be straight edged. It could mean the fall from righteousness if the context is hinting that he (the subject) did something wrong. It could also mean that he didn't want to live a life of pretending in the faith, as was hinted by the word minstrelsy. Either way, it is definitely understood that a fall did, indeed take place metaphorically. To further the use of the word "fall", Joyce continues by describing a literal fall. He uses references to humpty-dumpty to convey the message of this literal fall. We know that whatever fall was taken by this old man must have been dramatic because of the letters inside of the parenthesis. We can infer due to the common Biblical tone throughout the paper that this fall may have been related to something of his faith. |
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