Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

him at his deathbed or to preside at his funeral. In any event, as Ellmann tells us: "The
majesty of the church excited him and never left him" (Ellmann, James 30). Unable to
completely transcend "the nets" of his culture, Joyce continued to reveal those cultural
forces which contributed to his maturation. Describing such manifestation of forces,
despite the resistance of the individual, Foucault writes: "it invests them, is transmitted
by them; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their struggle against
it, resist the grip it has on them" (Foucault, Discipline 27). Despite Joyce's struggle
against the Church's grip on his consciousness, its power continued to manifest itself
through his art, revealing how deeply internalized it had become. Indeed, in James
Joyce's Pauline Vision, Robert Boyle describes Joyce's curious relationship with the
Church: "He did not see Catholicism as simply an evil force frustrating and repressing
the self. He did of course see that aspect, but he saw it against the background of
Catholic aspiration to fulfill and complete the self beyond the limits of nature, even
infinitely beyond" (47).
While fictionalizing Irish culture, Ulysses portrays those "terminal forms" of
power within it, perhaps as Joyce's subtle attempt to elicit social change. Ulysses
becomes the prism through which Joyce attempts to focus attention on Irish culture,
primarily the dominant influence of the Catholic Church which he felt stymied the Irish
spirit and caused cultural paralysis. However, while critical of the Church to the point of
blasphemy, Joyce, nevertheless, presents a paradoxical view of Catholicism. While it
portrays the effects of Catholic power on the Irish culture, Ulysses is firmly, although
often facetiously, rooted in the tradition, ritual, and values espoused by the Church.
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