"A kind of retrospective arrangement": Some Remarks on 'Ulysses' and Stylistics

The article discusses the possible scope of a programmatically wide stylistic approach: in fact, when confronted with Ulysses, any stylistic analysis based on dreams of scientific objectivity and clear-cut oppositions shows its inadequacy. Joyce’s radical experimentation virtually leaves no space to stylistic speculations because the incessant metamorphosis of genres and perspectives denies the possibility of any univocal definition of style, and reinforces the impression of an exhilarating, exuberant textuality in a perpetual state of transition. The text’s ability of constantly eluding the limits of referentiality, linguistic fixity and teleological narration becomes the starting point for an open, liberating encounter with its expression of a plural sensibility. The “mosaic of movements” and the almost cinematic sequence of stylistic frames can be considered the proxemic counterpart of the stylistic jigsaw that features so prominently in the text and which must be negotiated by a dynamic, wily reader willing to modify his positionings continuously in order to exchange unifocality for multivocality, reconnect the text's many narrative threads, and pursue its myriad unexpressed reading possibilities.