ICS he Middle Ages of James Joyce By Umberto Eco Translated frorn the ltal ian by El len Esrock Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Copyright © 1982 by the University of Tulsa; lntroductory Note © 1989 by the President ancl Fellows of Harvard College Al I rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Originally publishecl as "Le poetiche di Joyce," by Umberto Eco, © Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Bornpiani, Sonzogno, Etas S.p.A, Milan, 1962. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eco, Umberto. [Poetiche di Joyce. English] The aesthetics of Chaosrnos : the Micldle Ages of James Joyce/ by Umberto Eco , translatecl from the ltalian by Ellen Esrock. p. crn. Translation of: Le poetiche cli Joyce. Reprint. Originally publishecl: Tulsa, Okla. · University of Tulsa, cl 982. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-674-00635-6 1. Joyce, James, 1882-1941-Criticisrn and interpretation. 2. Joyce, James, 1882-1941-Aesthetics. 3. Medievalisrn in literature. I. Title. [PR6019.09Z532713 1989] 823'.912-dcl 9 88-28315 CIP Note to the 1989 Edition by David Robey vii Translator's Foreword ix Author's Note xi I. The Early Joyce Il. Ulysses 33 lii. Finnegans Wake 61 References to Joycean Literature in this Work 91 Eco's essay on Joyce originally appeared as the final chapter of the first edition (1962) of Opera Aperta, rnost of which is now translated into English as The Open Work (Harvard University Press, 1989); it was then rernoved from subsequent editions and pubi ished separately. This separation must have been dictated purely by considerations of size, since the argurnent of this essay is integrally connected to the themes of Qpera Aperta, for which Joyce's work is a constant point of reference.(For Eco, Joyce is the exemplary rnodern, or rnodernist, writer. His' work is the most powerful, radical, and influential ern bodirnent of tendencies that dominate the literature and art of our time-tendencies formulated by Eco in the concept of the "open" work. Finnegans Wake in particular is for Eco the "open" work par excel lence1 ) The Aesthetics of Chaosmos is thus a contribution to a discussion which has remained topica! in a great deal of modem literary theory a relatively early contributi on that predates the explosion of I iterary theory in the rnid-sixties, and anticipates much subsequent work. lt is distinguished by a nurnber of features that reflect Eco's particular con cerns at the time he wrote it, though these concerns have al so in various ways remained part of his thinking(Jhe conception of works of art as neµisJemoJogicaLrnetaphors," which plays a rnajor role in Opera Aperta, is applied with special force to Joyce, in whose evolution as a writer Eco finds an ernbodirnent of what he considers the rnajor development in the history of Western thought: the transition frorn models of rational order, expressed most fully in the summae of rne dieval Scholasticism, to the sense of chaos and crisis that dominates the modem experience of the world. Along with, and even more than, other modem "open" works, U/ysses and Finnegans Wake give form to this experience of the world, and thereby constitute in their own way a kind of knowledge, a bringing to consciousness of the nature of the modem condition. Such knowledge, Eco argues in Opera Aperta, is al so a basis for poi itical action; consciousness of the modem con ditjon enables one to act upon the world to change it for the better) \There is, too, an engagingly persona! aspect to Eco's discussion of VIII i\!ote to the 1989 Edition Joyce. Not only does Joyce's evolution, from Catholic, Thornist inter ests to a disordered vision of life, rnirror Eco's; the coexistence of rnodels of order and disorder that Eco finds in Ulysses has also char acterized rnost of his own work, including The Name of the Rose, which so strikinglyjuxtaposes the harmonious, rational rnedieval in tellectual systern with the worldview expressed by Williarn of Bas kerville: a distinctively modem sense of chaos and crisis .. , David Robey rans s The Aesthetics of Chaosmos is a translation of Umberto Eco's ltalian text Le Poetiche di Joyce (Milano: Bompiani, 1966), first published as a part of Opera Aperta (Milano: Bompiani, 1962). For the present edition, Eco has introduced one new section, "The Medieval Model," which incorporates parts of a lecture given in 1969 at Tu Isa University, and he has substantially expanded one existing section, "The Poetics of the Pun." Also, as explained in the author's note, certain scholarly references have been eliminated. The translation of Eco's work proved challenging. In addition to the expected task of recasting stylistic forms, the project required careful balancing. On the one hand, we wished to maintain the originai 1960's perspective of the text. We sought, therefore, to avoid terminology that was jndigenous to more contemporary models of I inguistic analysis (as developed, for example, by Eco in A Theory of Semantics [Bloorn ington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1976]). On the other hand, the ltalian text was written with an irnpulse towards the future. Eco's analyses foreshadowed issues that would be more fully developed within the frarnework of conternporary semiotics. We attempted, then, to recap ture its trajectory~ as well as its point of origin. I am greatly indebted to Alice Oxman for a preliminary, partial translation of Le Poetiche di Joyce, portions of which have been in corporated into the present text. And I am grateful, of course, to Um berto Eco, for his patience in undertaking this excursion into his Joycean past. In the spirit of translator-editors, I accept responsibility for al I errors. Ellen J. Es rock d ~--Jew York University, 1979 s In publishing my Joycean adventure after twenty years I have not succumbed to the temptation to make substantial changes, even though the long work with Ellen Esrock in making the text more comprehen sible has led to many cuts, especially in those parts which functioned at the time to give various items of scholarly information to ltalian readers. Joyce was a/so an ltalian author, and some of his highest praise carne in the very beginning from the ltalian literary !JJilitJr (Svevo, Benco, Montale ... ). But in 1962 Ulysses had been fully trans lated into ltalian for only two years, not to mention the incomplete and tentative translations of Finnegans Wake. Thus my text was over loaded with explanations and bibliographical references unnecessary for the current American reader. I have therefore retained only the parts focusing on the centrai theme of my research: the permanence of a medieval model, not only in the e~y writings but also in the later work of James Joyce. J In order to understand my curiosity, some biographical information may be helpful: I began my scholarly career studying medieval aes: !~~J(c:_s(// Problema Estetico in San Tommaso [Torino: Edizioni di "Fi losofia," 1956]; "Sviluppo dell'estetica Medievale," in Momenti e Problemi di Storia de/l'estetica [Milano: Marzorati, 1959], both works ··amalgamated in // Problema Estetico in Tommaso d'Aquino [Milano: Bompiani, 1970]),1"irr1mediately after (but following the same interests and curiosity about the problem of structuring vs. destructuring in communication), I studied the language of contemporary avant-gardes. The study of Joyce was first published as part of my bookDpeJéL!:\perta (Milano: Bompiani, 1962) the first chapter of which the reader can find as the first essay of my recent The Rote of the Reader (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1979):';, T o me Joyce was the node where the Middle Ages and the avant garde meet, and the present book is the story and the historical theoretical foundation of such a paradoxical meeting:· I have therefore chosen to keep the originai perspective of my text, even though much important Joycean research has appeared since 1962. Thus I have not taken into account the challenging contributions Xli Author'~ Note ofThornas Staley, Bernard Benstock, Fritz Senn, Robert Scholes, David Hayrnann, Lulli Paci, Anthony Burgess and others, or, to speak of research more directly connected with rny topic, Jacques Aubert and Jan Schoonbroodt. References to the scholarship that inspired rny re search prior to 1962 are listed at the end of the book, while other works, prirnarily concerning the Middle Ages, Renaissance philoso phy, and rnodern science are found in the footnotes. I have expanded a paragraph on the rnedieval model and an analysis of puns in Fin negans Wake (the subject of a 1971 essay "Sernantics of Metaphor," now published in The Rote of the r~eader). I have agreed to awaken-again and rnake rny book riverrunning in a vicus of recirculation only because of the rnissionary fervor of rny friends at the Jarnes Joyce Foundation and James Joyce Quarterly, to whorn we owe the fact that Martello Tower is stili and again living. My debt to thern should be recorded in Finneganian. That, in fact, has been done, but only in secret files lost or hidden in the rneandertale connecting the "hauts lieux" of Trieste, Oublin, Paris, Zurich and Tulsa. U rnberto Eco Milano, 1981