Credible Resonance, or Believable Euphony in the Joyce Oeuvre

This essay studies a primary attribute of the Joyce oeuvre, its phonological resonance, and seeks ways to distinguish credible resonance, or believable euphony, from resonance that is not. To do so, the essay develops a typology of particulars when looking at passages in episode 3 of Ulysses, a string of fragments in part II of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and several moments in Chamber Music, Dubliners, and Finnegans Wake. The essay finds that resonance—the patterning of foregrounded sounds, whether phonemes, syllables, or the tone units of intonation—becomes more noteworthy as the Joyce oeuvre unfolds, and that, after “Aeolus” in Ulysses, it is increasingly difficult to say when the euphony is believable. The essay argues that distinctions between credible and specious resonance are semantic in nature and that the reader, the source of the sounds in reception, may have recourse to the typology of particulars developed when distinguishing credible resonance from its impostors.