Reintroducing the Sirens' Fugue

Abstract:

This essay revisits the difficulty around “musical” interpretations of the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses. It argues that reading the episode through a looser notion of the fugue than previously suggested can contribute significantly to the understanding of the episode’s texture, narrative mediation, and renderings of affect, without committing to the establishment of formal correspondences between literary and fugal structures that more literal “fugal” readings of the episode tend to require. Furthermore, the essay suggests that the “fugal” quality of the episode is best understood as an extra-diegetic semiosis-through-composition that draws upon, interacts with, and at times perverts the language of diegetic characters, and that Bloom’s journey to the musical world of the Sirens is best understood as modulations in modes of meaning-making throughout the episode that lean into or move away from this second-level, musical semiosis.