My thesis will focus on the intertextuality of recurring characters in works of fiction, primarily novels. I will be focusing mainly on the works of James Joyce and how the character of Stephen Dedalus appears in both A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses as a protagonist. I would also like to relate this to Kurt Vonnegut’s use of recurring characters, many minor characters from his most famous work Slaughterhouse 5 also appear as main characters in other novels in his collective works (Mother Night, God Bless You Mr Rosewater and Breakfast of Champions). 

In relation to Joyce I would like to draw on David Hayman’s Ulysses The Mechanics of Meaning (University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), specifically the section of chapter 2 “Dublin, June 16, 1904”, Stephen in the Plot where-in-which he provides an depth character description of Joyce’s fictional alter-ego: “Poor, bedraggled, and still unfledged, Stephen has returned to Ireland from Paris where he read much but wrote little. A grounded hawk among wild geese” (24). This will be useful when considering Ulysses as a sequel to A Portrait and displaying the evolution of the recurring central character from the hopeful ending of the Bildungsroman.

For further information on intertextuality I will draw from Graham Allen’s book on the subject itself Intertextuality (Routledge, 2000). From the introduction he examines interpretation of texts and then later in Chapter 2 “The text unbound: Barthes”, in the section “Readerly and Writerly Texts” he writes about the reader’s experience of a text, linear development of a story and the meanings within comparing them to “detectives shifting through the clues sequentially provided by a narrative”. This will be particularly relevant when considering and possibly explaining the appeal of the recurring characters in fiction to readers. What is it about the possible inter-connectivity of a larger fictional world that has not only allowed links to be drawn from one work of a writer to another as in the case of Joyce but has also influenced modern popular culture today.

I will also draw from the casebook on James Joyce Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man edited by Morris Beja (The Macmillan Press, 1973), specifically the “The Artist“ by Harry Levin (1941) which opens discussing the Bildungsroman and characters that serve as a stand-in figure for the writer themselves. This will be useful as A Portrait is considered a semi-autobiographical work by Joyce and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is written using the writer’s own experiences during the Second World War. It will potentially provide useful perspectives to examine Stephen Dedalus as a character within the two texts and then as the alter-ego of the writer himself. I will also refer to Hugh Kenner’s “The Portrait In Perspective“ (1955) which is included in the same collection.

Drawing from The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge University Press, 2004) I will reference John Paul Riquelme’s piece “Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: transforming the nightmare of history” where-in-which the works of Oscar Wilde, an area I am well acquainted with, are referenced early on. I am also interested in making use of Stephen Hero, as the original draft for A Portrait in order to explore the aforementioned development of the character. Examining the writer’s earlier work and observing the changes made for the final novel should assist in writing about development. Also from The Cambridge Companion I will draw from Derek Attridge’s Chapter 1 piece “Reading Joyce”, Attridge points out the influence of Joyce on modern culture, as I have also expressed an interest in, “in television and video, film, popular music, and advertising, all of which are marked as modern genres by the use of Joycean techniques” (1) Specifically I would like to explore this in terms of recurring characters in modern cinema and may return to Graham Allen’s Intertextuality, specifically the section of Chapter 5 “Postmodern Conclusions” and the section “Intertextuality in the non-literary arts” where he discusses the intertextuality of performance.

Having studied the works of Joyce and other Modernists (specifically T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land) as pieces that lend themselves well to live performance in the past it may be insightful to look into that area again for relevant sources pertaining to the writer’s world building and readers’ experiences. I may draw from Penny Farfan and Katherine E. Kelly’s Staging Modernism: Introduction (John Hopkins University Press, 2008) for this route in which they state that “A play, for example, exists both as a printed and performance text” (1). Previously I have made use of this piece when examining Episode 15 of Ulysses, “Circe” as a major turning point for Joyce’s development of characters in the book. I also made reference to Vincent J. Cheng’s piece “Stephen Dedalus and the Black Panther” from James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa, 1987).

To consider Vonnegut’s use of the recurring characters particularly his character Kilgore Trout and his role as a minor character in Slaughterhouse 5 and reappearance as one of the protagonists in the later novel Breakfast of Champions I will also examine the writer’s use of Billy Pilgrim’s fractured timeline detailing their shared experience of the war, drawing from Amanda Wick’s “All This Happened, More or Less”: The Science Fiction of Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five” (Routledge, 2014). Vonnegut also inserts himself into his works, appearing in the background of the earlier novel and as a creator figure who interacts with Kilgore Trout in the later one. This “meta-textual” writing will also be relevant to the exploration of these characters in works of fiction who serve an autobiographical role for the author, Joyce as a Modernist writer and Vonnegut as a writer in the Post-Modern period.

I will make use of the Boole Library IT services and extensive collections for this project and will continue to search for potentially relevant journal articles and secondary sources.

Bibliography:

Hayman, David. Ulysses: The Mechanics of Meaning. Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Print.

Allen. Graham. Intertextuality. London. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. 2000. Print.

Levin, Harry.”The Artist.” Kenner, Hugh. ”The Portrait in Perspective”. James Joyce Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A Casebook. Edited by Morris Beja. The Macmillan Press. 1973. Print.

Farfan, Penny and Katherine E. Kelly. Staging Modernism: Introduction. Baltimore. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Print.

J. Cheng, Vincent. “Stephen Dedalus and the Black Panther Vampire”. James Joyce Quarterly. Tulsa. University of Tulsa. 1987. Print.

Riquelme, John Paul. “Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: transforming the nightmare of history”. Attridge, Derek. “Reading Joyce”. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Edited by Derek Attridge. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2009. Print.

Wicks, Amanda. “All This Happened, More or Less”: The Science Fiction of Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five”. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. 2014.