In James Joyce`s Ulysses, the concept of metempsychosis, that is, the pattern of a soul`s persistence through wanderings in different bodies, functions as one of major generating principles. On the level of the novel`s textuality, the principle of metempsychosis informs diverse modes of narrative method in which the same element recurs in varied forms contexts through the progress of the text. In so doing, the author`s artistic identity, or the metempsychotic soul of the textuality, is consistently demonstrated in its control of a great variety of heterogeneous factors. The textual metempsychosis is embodied on such levels as chapter difference-involving stylistic changes and narrative discontinuity-, motif development, and linguistic transformation. Each of the different chapters is a "body" which the "soul" of the novel, that is the artistic identity of the author, transits in its metempsychotic stream of narrative existence. The stylistic odyssey follows the metempsychotic pattern of "birth-wandering-death-rebirth" not only in sustaining implicitly the thematic soul but also in maintaining Joyce`s unique linguistic spirit. The narrative discontinuity between adjacent chapters is bridged by chapter links consisting of common motifs. Numberless motifs reappear, evolving themselves and contributing to renew the organic structures and meanings of the whole novel. The motif of "wandering," involving enduring of identity and intermission of death is saliently incarnated on the levels of language and Bloom`s name. |