Sayı 31 Aralık 2011 James Joyce And The Condition Of Modern Man: Hunger, Food And Eating Revealing Self-Identity And Inter-Human Relationship In Lestrygonians 191 JAMES JOYCE AND THE CONDITION OF MODERN MAN: HUNGER, FOOD AND EATING REVEALING SELF-IDENTITY AND INTER-HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IN LESTRYGONIANS Petru GOLBAN Doç. Dr., Namık Kemal Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, Batı Dilleri ve Edebiyatları Bölümü ABSTRACT: In literary history, food and eating are central themes to the work of certain writers; to others, they are metaphors or motifs associated with some other larger themes. Among those of the latter writing perspective is James Joyce, in whose fiction food and its consumption receive a complex and subtle significance. Joyce’s work being itself extremely complex and with multiple connotations, this study focuses just on one section of his work, namely on the episode known as the ‘Lestrygonians’ from the novel Ulysses. Actually, Joyce’s preoccupation with food in this section is so obvious that one might consider it to be this episode’s central theme. It may be so, but it is also true, as we attempt to argue, that Joyce makes connections between food and both the private and the public aspects of the character’s life in order to embrace again a wide range of issues, central to his entire work, including the questions of self-identity, individual frustration and alienation, family, love, sexuality, social status and behaviour, nationalism and religion. To reveal the literary significance of food and the ways in which Joyce employs food, hunger and eating as a means of engaging with these issues represents the main aim of the present study. Keywords: food, hunger, Joyce, stream of consciousness novel, ‘Lestrygonians’, interior monologue, character, frustration, alienation. ÖZET: Yazın tarihinde “yemek” ve “yemek edimi” kimi yazarların yapıtlarında ana temayı oluştururken, James Joyce gibi kimilerininkilerde farklı temalarla ilgili eğretileme ya da motif olarak kullanılırlar. Joyce’un kurgusunda yemek ve yemek tüketimi karmaşık ve ilk anda anlaşılır olmayan bir önem kazanır. Zaten karmaşık olan Joyce’un yapıtı, yemek ve simgeleriyle sayesinde birden, oldukça yan anlam taşıyan yapıt haline gelir. Bu çalışma, Ulyses romanında “Lestrygonians” diye bilinen bölümle sınırlandırılmıştır. Aslında, Joyce’un bu bölümde yemeğe odaklanışı o kadar belirgindir ki, bu bölümün ana izleğinin yemek olduğu rahatlıkla söylenebilir. Joyce, yemeği karakterin özel ve genel yönleriyle birleştirerek, yapıtında kendini sorgulama, bireysel hüsran, yabancılaşma, aile, aşk, cinsellik, sosyal konum ve tutum, milliyetçilik ve din gibi konularını ele alır. Bu çalışmanın esas amacı, yemeğin ve Joyce’un yemek, açlık gibi konuları ele almasının yazınsal önemini ortaya koymaktır.. Anahtar Kelimeler: yemek, açlık, Joyce, bilinç akışı romanı, “Lestrygonians”, iç monolog, karakter, hüsran, yabancılaşma. I. Introduction: Food as a Literary Concern From ancient period all the way throughout centuries until nowadays it is easy to notice how every now and then writers refer in their works and in different ways to eating and drinking. The food has become the object of a discourse, or, in fact, the object of “a multitude of discourses: stage plays, religious polemics, mystical tracts, cookbooks, medical texts, herbals, travelogues, novels, to name a few of the genres; primitivist legend, humoral physiology, Christian asceticism, utopian speculation, to name a few of the intellectual traditions or “discursive formations” entailed, as Michel Foucault once characterized them” (Appelbaum, 2006: xiii). Among the multiple reasons for such a thematic concern, stands the idea that food is a means of revealing the personality of a character, his/her self and social identity: “formative feeding experiences are inscribed in the