Term of Award
Fall 2009
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English (M.A.)
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis (open access)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Literature and Philosophy
Committee Chair
Howard Keeley
Committee Member 1
Joe Pellegrino
Committee Member 2
Rebecca Ziegler
Abstract
Privileging a historicist approach, this document explores the presence of consumer culture, particularly advertising, in James Joyce's seminal modernist novel, Ulysses (1922). It interrogates Joyce's awareness of how a broad upswing in Ireland's post-Famine economy precipitated advertising-intensive consumerism in both rural and urban Ireland. Foci include the late-nineteenth century transition in agriculture from arable farming to cattle-growing (grazier pastoralism), which, spurring economic growth, facilitated the emergence of a strong farmer rural bourgeoisie. The thesis considers how Ulysses inscribes and critiques that relatively affluent coterie's expenditures on domestic cultural tourism, as well as hygiene-related products, whose presence on the Irish scene was complicated by a British discourse on imperial cleanliness. Building a substantive critical context, the thesis also presents a comparative analysis of advertising in Ulysses and a novel it directly influenced, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
Recommended Citation
Ratcliff, Mindy Jo, "All the Beef to the Heels Were in: Advertising and Plenty in Joyce's Ulysses" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 175.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/175
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
