Joyce - Melissa Mendoza

Lewis Carroll and James Joyce both use polysemy in order to create nonsense and introduce multiple meanings in a single sentence or phrase. In Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, Carroll uses the words “tail” and “tale” as a playful way to aesthetically change his format of writing. By telling part of the story in the shape of a rat’s tail, the reader is able to think about the idea of a tail while reading. This creates a paradox between what is being said and the mental images being produced from the physical shape of the passage.

Similarly, James Joyce also uses polysemy to shift between meanings and mental representations. “The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-linsfirst loved livvy,” (pg.4). Joyce changes the spelling of certain words, and makes up others based on the sounds he wants to produce. Relating a fall to the humpty dumpty poem, gives it a more lyrical and light tone. After Joyce makes this connection, the author continues to play with words such as “humself” and “prumptly” which when read quickly out loud still sound like “himself” and “promptly” but it also still allows a closer connection to the humpty dumpty theme.  

Polysemy seems to appear frequently in nonsense literature. The fact that a concept can have multiple meanings create overlapping and divergent thoughts, which can cause much confusion. Many of the passages and poems studied, have so far been able to carry multiple representations and relations. The idea that nonsense is meaningless or gibberish now becomes interesting to think about because in reality, much of what we have discussed focuses mostly on the various meanings between concepts. The duality nonsense literature contains, makes it paradoxical to the stereotypical definition we give nonsense. Both Lewis Carroll and Joyce have used this duality within nonsensical writing to play and intertwine various connections, creating a web of definition for each concept or thought.