Joyce- polysemy

One of the most famous literary devices and frequently used by Lewis Carroll in the Alice in Wonderland is polysemy.  Polysemy can be occurred when a single word or thought spontaneously produce multiple meaning. In Alice in Wonderland, Carroll employed polysemy to create comical atmosphere and make his work nonsense. In order to show effect of polysemy, Carroll uses some word play: homophones.  Homophones refer to any word that is pronounced the same as another word but those words have different meanings. One of the most polysemy created by use of homophones is “tail”. In the story, tail uses as “tail” of animals and the “tail” as a story. Another examples of polysemy- unlike “tail” example which the two different meanings have same spelling- are created by words that have different spelling but sounds similar. For instance, the word “lesson” and “lessen”, “not “ and “knot”, and “porpoise” and “purpose”, etc. Similar to Lewis Carroll, James Joyce who is one of the famous and influential modernist writers in early 20^th century also utilizes polysemy to make his works more avant-garde. In his one of the famous works called Finnegans Wake he plays some word play to produce polysemy. Unlike Carroll in the Alice in Wonderland where he uses homophones or words that have similar sounds but different meaning and spelling, Joyce creates a made up words in a way that once the readers hear the sound of the word, they can think more than one possible meaning of the made-up words. For example, chapter 5 on book 1 of Finnegans Wake Joyce states, “What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday this municipal sin business?” In this sentence the word “tragoady” can be polysmey word. Tragoady is a made-up word so it does not have specific definition but readers can think possible meaning of this word based on sound. Tragoady can be dismantled in to two possible words: tra- and goad. With the prefix “tra-” which means “across”, “over”, or “beyond”, and goad, which means unpleasant, readers might think this word as extremely or universally unpleasant. At the same time if a reader speaks the word “tragoady” out loud, he or she might recognize that this word sounds like “tragedy”. Therefore, since this word (even though the meanings are quite similar since both unpleasant and tragedy have negative connotation) has more than one meaning that can be produced based on either the sound or the component of the made up words, it is a example of polysemy. Also in the same sentence another polysemy is shown by the word “thundersday”. Similar to the word “tragoady” the word “thundersday” can produce multiple meaning based on either the sound or the componenets that are used to make this coined word. Based on the sound, the word thundersday similar to Thursday. And if one closely looks at this word, he or she might recognize that the word “thundersday” is made up by putting two words: thunders and day. Therefore, the word “thundersday” can be referred to a weather condition.