Before Ulysses, most female characters of Joyce’s works remain locked in fixed images just like the imaginary chalice the boy carries in his chest in “Araby.” These female characters, however, are reborn into a bold woman lifting skirts and exposing underwears in “Nausicaa.” Gerty of “Nausicaa” earns the narrative voice as the subject and turns Bloom into the object of her gaze and imagination. According to Salman Rushdie, “the empire writes back with a vengeance.” Not a few works including Coetzee’s Foe against Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe have been rewritten from the perspective of the colonized. Generally speaking, “rewriting” or “writing back” means revising colonial texts from the perspective of the object of colonization. However, how can we apply this theme of “rewriting” in discussing the same author’s different works? For Joyce’s “Nausicaa” evokes scenes from his own former works, of course, not without twists or reversals. Accordingly, this essay re-reads “Nausicaa” as a re-writing of “Eveline,” “The Dead,” and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man especially in terms of the power relationship between male and female characters. In this reading, Gerty ridicules the passive role which is formerly played by Eveline, Gretta, and the Bird-Girl, and reclaims the subjective narrative voice, satisfying her own voyeuristic desire. In re-reading “Nausicaa” as a re-writing, the significance of the altar is quite crucial and revealing. In fact, the altar is the very space for dynamic transformation in which the blessed sacrament turns into the Christ’s body and blood. In some sense, the “Nausicaa” episode itself embodies a kind of altar in which the service devoted for Virgin Mary, masturbations performed between Bloom and Gerty, and memories of Joyce’s former works are all mixed together not fixed into any single image or essence. In this way, all of these jumbles and transformations contribute to making alternative stories by revising nostalgic memories of their original versions. The “Nausicaa” episode lays bare Joyce’s authorial efforts of ceaselessly deconstructing and reconstructing what he has invented in his former texts.

Before Ulysses, most female characters of Joyce’s works remain locked in fixed images just like the imaginary chalice the boy carries in his chest in “Araby.” These female characters, however, are reborn into a bold woman lifting skirts and exposing underwears in “Nausicaa.” Gerty of “Nausicaa” earns the narrative voice as the subject and turns Bloom into the object of her gaze and imagination. According to Salman Rushdie, “the empire writes back with a vengeance.” Not a few works including Coetzee’s Foe against Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe have been rewritten from the perspective of the colonized. Generally speaking, “rewriting” or “writing back” means revising colonial texts from the perspective of the object of colonization. However, how can we apply this theme of “rewriting” in discussing the same author’s different works? For Joyce’s “Nausicaa” evokes scenes from his own former works, of course, not without twists or reversals. Accordingly, this essay re-reads “Nausicaa” as a re-writing of “Eveline,” “The Dead,” and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man especially in terms of the power relationship between male and female characters. In this reading, Gerty ridicules the passive role which is formerly played by Eveline, Gretta, and the Bird-Girl, and reclaims the subjective narrative voice, satisfying her own voyeuristic desire. In re-reading “Nausicaa” as a re-writing, the significance of the altar is quite crucial and revealing. In fact, the altar is the very space for dynamic transformation in which the blessed sacrament turns into the Christ’s body and blood. In some sense, the “Nausicaa” episode itself embodies a kind of altar in which the service devoted for Virgin Mary, masturbations performed between Bloom and Gerty, and memories of Joyce’s former works are all mixed together not fixed into any single image or essence. In this way, all of these jumbles and transformations contribute to making alternative stories by revising nostalgic memories of their original versions. The “Nausicaa” episode lays bare Joyce’s authorial efforts of ceaselessly deconstructing and reconstructing what he has invented in his former texts.

Joyce, Nausicaa, rewriting, writing back, altar, memory