Cage--Amy

     John Cage explores the idea of silence and and sound. In his lecture, "Lecture on Nothing," Cage writes on just that, nothing. The actual words of Cage's lecture read as if someone is simply rambling, as he repeats himself and talks in circles. And while the content of his words should not be completely disregarded, it is clear that the focus of the lecture is on the frequent pauses which break up the text.
     It is clear that "Lecture on Nothing" is a piece that is meant to be performed. Only when read aloud does the reader and/or audience get the full effect of the lecture. Cage writes:

"                                                                                                                                         But
now                               there are silences                                                                      and the
words                    help                                help make                                                         the
silences                              .                                                                                                        "

Much like Mallarme, Cage uses white space. However, whereas Mallarme used the white space to create a visual image on the page, Cage uses the white space to create silence. The words in the above quote reinforce this idea. Cage writes, "But now there are silences and the words help help make the silences." As Cage says, the words are necessary to create the silences. In a way, the words serve as punctuation. Punctuation serves as a way to organize thoughts, and when one is reading something aloud, periods and commas signal when the reader should pause and take a breath in the middle of reading. In "Lecture on Nothing," Cage uses words as bookends to frame the silence. By definition, lectures are things that are listened to; one is not supposed to talk during a lecture, but rather, must only listen to the lecture. Also, by definition, lectures are built out of words. Cage needs words to create a lecture, and he needs to create a lecture because he needs a pretense for people to listen to him. Thus, the words serve not as the substance of the lecture, but rather as punctuation, marking the beginning and ends of sections of silence. There are white spaces breaking up sentences because the sentences themselves are important, and the sentence fragments serve as periods and commas, slicing up and organizing what is really a lecture of silence.
     Cage's treatment of punctuation itself is interesting. The periods and commas in "Lecture on Nothing" are always isolated in the middle of two sections of white space (for instance, "         .        "). It is as if Cage is drawing attention to the commas and periods. Just as he is forcing his listeners to pay attention to silence, he is also drawing attention to punctuation. Because the periods and commas are always isolated and because one does not make a sound when they are reading punctuation, the commas and periods serve to prolong the sections of silence. Thus, Cage exaggerates pauses that happen naturally in every day speech. In this way, Cage is calling to attention how silence, even the slightest of pauses, is overlooked and taken for granted in every day life. With "Lecture on Nothing," Cage forces his listeners to hear silence in a new way. 

Cage- Flomenbaum

            The main points that Cage makes in these lectures is that there is a clear and underrated connection between silence, sound, and noise as well as the fact that this connection relates closely to that between words and music. Most people assume that silence is the absence of noise but in many ways, noise is the absence of silence and sound is the creation of meaningful noise. Cage makes the argument that silence is underutilized in modern day society and is often seen as a negative, when in reality silence is the way that people make sense of sounds and noise. This relationship is epitomized with the relationship between words and music.
            One interesting way to consider this relationship is in regards to the idea of background noise. While in many cases noise can be very distracting, it can also be seen as the creation of silence. Many people feel uncomfortable in total silence and often need some kind of background noise, such as music, to tune out in order to focus on other thoughts or tasks. While clearly these noises are not silence, they, in a way, create the same essence as a lack of noise (meaning total silence). Noise, according to this idea, is clearly different than sounds, which seem to be more intentional noises created for a specific purpose or meaning.
            Cage also focuses on music verses other sounds and having these concepts play off of each other. For example, the way that he composes this lecture seems like a musical piece both when looked at and when heard out loud. Cage wants the reader to understand that words are music and music is created from words. People tend to feel that music is very intentional and purposeful, while words can be used simply to fill the silence. Throughout this piece, Cage reiterates that his speaking is silence, meaning that it is pointless, as most people believe silence is. Rather than have silence be the absence of noise, Cage is making his voice the absence of silence. Music is similar in the way that many people use it to fill the silence but in many cases, people will spend much of their time and energy solely focusing and listening to music. Hence, music is the quintessential example of the relationship between silence and noise in one.
            It is also important to note the structure of this poem and its relationship to chance. Through this point, he relates back to the relationship between silence and noise as well as that between music and words. Cage writes this poem using chance and luck and sort of with the intention of letting anything happen. Yet, the poem is very structured both in its physical layout and in the words used. Cage is making the point that these two ideas can work together and both be used at the same time. Similarly, regarding the relationship between noise and silence, in many ways these two are not mutually exclusive and can only exist with the other one. If silence existed all of the time, people would become unable to hear it because there would be nothing else. On the other hand, without silence, noise would be the norm. In regards to music and words, these two are very connected because without words, music has little point either based on the fact that the music itself has no words or because the audience would be unable to discuss the music after hearing it. Similarly, words naturally rely on a certain way of speaking them in order to portray meaning, which is a form of musical expression in some ways. The natural inflection placed on words is a form of music.  Ultimately, Cage’s point is that these relationships relay on one another and are not opposites as most people assume they are.

Joyce

“Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined aslumbered, even in our own nighttime by the sedge of the troutling stream that Bronto loved and Brunto has a lean on. Hiccubat edilis. Apud libertinam parvulam.”

                                                                                    -James Joyce

This quote has a lot going on within in and some of the techniques I saw were imagery, polysemy, and onomatopoeia. The meaning of this quote starts talking about a Brontosaurus specifically. In the first sentence, it describes the edge of a stream at night where there are fish outlined but we just can’t see them. Then the next sentence translates to mean, "here lies the edible man. By the tiny freedwoman." I think the word edible stands for more than one meaning (polysemy) because it is talking about the dinosaur that likes to eat fish. Although the quote is saying that the man, the dinosaur, is edible which is outlandish because a dinosaur cannot be edible. Brontosauruses were herbivores which is another reason that the word edible could be being used in this sentence. On the other hand, the dinosaur could be edible by death. I think he uses the word man instead because death can sometimes only be thought of in humanistic ways. So maybe the dinosaur was edible by death. I relate this part of the quote to death because the sentence starts out with “Here lies…” which usually is on a grave or tombstone. The odd thing about the last part of the quote is that it talks about a freedwoman. The way the sentence is arranged says that the “edible man” is laid to rest with a freedwoman. Joyce chooses to make up a lot of his words in this novel, which is just what Lear and Carroll did for their poems. All three authors did this because they wanted to keep the context of the word the same but also make the phonetic piece of the sentence. For example the word “troutling” was made up to sound like the word trattling to take on two different meanings. Trattling could have been used to describe the sound of the stream (onomatopoeia) but also the trout in the word could be describing the fish in the stream. Also Carroll was famous for using polysemy, which is just what Joyce did in just about every sentence in this novel. “Brontoichthyan” was another word that joined two words together. First there is the beginning of the word Bronto- which in Greek means thunder. The last part of the word –ichthyan which made from ichtyal. Ichtyal means of, pertaining to, or characteristic of fishes which I think relates to the stream. I still can’t figure out where thunder fits into the context of this quote. Overall this was the analysis I percieved from this quote. Analyzing this quote made me see just how much Joyce used polysemy to choose what he wrote.

The Language of Nonsense in Joyce_Bianco

In James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Joyce creates a complex prose that demonstrates the language of nonsense. Joyce uses polysemy throughout the prose to characterize the work itself. Polysemy is defined as a word or symbol having multiple meanings. Joyce starts the prose with, “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve to shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs”. The first word use is ‘riverrun’, riverrun would either be the river running past Adam and Eve or it could be used to suggest Adam and Eve’s past. Through the usage of polysemy, Joyce demonstrates the constant repetition of history. By beginning with the biblical reference of creation as well as references to the fall of the angels, Joyce hints at the nature of humankind. This is particularly demonstrated in the first sentence when he states, “commodius vicus of recirculation’. The word ‘commodius’ could refer to a roman emperor yet it could also mean decay or commode.

 The double meaning of words that Joyce plays upon also demonstrates the duality of humankind. Duality is the theory that the mind and body are separate yet intertwined. Humankind demonstrates duality in that both men and women demonstrate dual sides in their individualism and personality. This is furthered by the introduction of the main characters H.C.E. and A.L.P. While the main characters are never introduced by their full names, Joyce constantly refers to them with a slew of various names, metaphors and abbreviations. For example, in the first sentence of Finnegans Wake, Joyce immediately introduces H.C.E. within the first sentence with the usage of ‘Howth Castle and Environs’. With both H.C.E and A.L.P. having various names and abbreviations, it furthers the duality of humankind.

            Joyce also demonstrates the crescendos and climaxes of history through the usage of random nonsense. For instance, “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”. Joyce intermingles the nonsense words throughout the prose, which creates the feeling of repetition and fluidity. Each of the nonsense words break apart any original sense of understanding of the prose, adding to the multi-meaning nature of the prose. The failure for one to find meaning within such nonsense words adds to the feeling of one never being able to find meaning within the repetitive nature of history.

Joyce - connor chapman

Oh, lord. Finnegans Wake. Polysemy is ever-rampant in this work, and it's further proof that you don't need structure to create an excellent piece of literature. It reads like a druenk dysfunctional jawline, which may or may not have inspired lines 31-33 on the second page of book one: "ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like/Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-/les." Just before, Joyce was referring to a man who was caught for public masturbation, and this here appears to be a continuation of the description of that character. "ivoroiled" sounds like "involved," "overalls" sounds like "ovaries," "fondeed" sounds like "found seed," and "caligulate" sounds like "copulate," and it is as well a reference to the Roman emperor Caligula, whose legacy is that of an insane rule and sexual perversion. Here Joyce is describing the character's sexually deviant habits, and it appears that he would commit adultery and, well, for lack of better phrasing, continue the legacy of Caligula on a regular basis, as indicated by the phrase "habitacularly" which sounds like "habitually," "particularly," and "spectacularly." Joyce is taking Gertrude Stein's free association and polysemy and making it his own but not only using said free association, but he's mashing words together and making up his own, something Shakespeare used to do, but for he coined his own phrases, and Joyce is smashing together a whirlwind of that and portmanteaus; this is the portrait of a character as painted in the wake of the surrealist movement's dawning.

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.

Joyce - Amanda

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.