Chora and Abjection in Ulysses and Hamlet

• Main Authors: Lin, Ya-chien, 林亞蒨
• Other Authors: Chuang, Kun-liang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/49280693934401608436

博士 === 輔仁大學 === 跨文化研究所比較文學博士班 === 102 === Joyce quotes, parasitizes, exploits, deciphers, and interpolates Hamlet in Ulysses. Characters in Ulysses and Hamlet, needing to coordinate their roles and trying to accommodate themselves, can be contrasted and compared. Originally, the role of a family should be nutritious. The nourishment and pampering from mothers are like chora, breeding and accommodating their babies. Once children grow up, they want to separate from their fusions with mothers and to transfer “semiotic motility onto the symbolic order.” Children are eager to fly from the familial bondage; therefore, the mother becomes “an other” and the abjection. Hamlet belittles Gertrude’s instant remarriage while Stephen rejects his mother’s dogmas. Besides, Hamlet is constantly haunted by King Hamlet’s ghost while Stephen cannot get rid of the condemnation of his mother’s ghost. Rudy’s death is the crucial reason why Bloom’s marriage is crumbling. Derrida analyzes that mourning, like pregnancy, will be deviated and delivered sometime. When one is discarded by his/her significant others and realizes solitude, he/she will finally awake and discard others, his/her mother, and even significant others. In addition, the affection can be sealed. Hamlet and Stephen prison their minds. As to Bloom, he bears eight children in chapter 15 “Circe,” but the eight children immediately become independent subjects and the “otherness” adults after being born. The scene is totally different from what Bloom expects in chapter 6—to see his son grow up. Bloom does not need Molly’s sex cell and delivers eight children independently. At the end of chapter 15, Rudy gazes at Bloom, “unseeing” him and Stephen rejects to be Bloom’s surrogate son, which will make Bloom awaken that there will be no son to be a medium to bridge his relationship with Molly. With the awakening to this reality, Bloom finally discards haunting Rudy and the approximate 11-year one-sided wish to go back to the “halcyon days” with Molly. Bloom will just coexist with Molly. He eventually molds his own subject—“the new Bloom.”