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they seem to us eminently well matched. But how did the idea of matching them come about? Once matched they seem to cause a short circuit of associations, but we know that for the most part the short circuit arises a posteriori and does not motivate the act of association. Minucius is like Mandrake: the coupling institutes between the two an elisional similitude which generates a metaphor (in which vehicle and tenor are exceptionally co-present and interchangeable). |
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But why specifically Minucius and Mandrake? The comic strip itself supplies the key which allows us to give a new answer (which in turn reinforces our original hypothesis). Minucius is also called Felix. And Felix is another typical comic strip character, Pat Sullivan's cat, appearing in the daily comics from 1923 and thus probably known to Joyce. |
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Here, then, is the mechanism subjacent to the metaphoric substitution: Minucius refers by contiguity to Felix, Felix refers by contiguity (belonging to the same universe of comic strips) to Mandrake. Once the middle term has fallen, there remains a coupling that does not seem justified by any contiguity and thus appears to be metaphoric. The always possible substitution between Minucius and Mandrake is attributable no longer to the possibility of passing from one to the other through a series of successive choices but to the fact that they seem to possess characteristics which are 'similar' (advocates, rhetoricians, and so on) and thus 'analogous'. |
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This example explains to us how the metaphor came about, but not why it functions. In point of fact, the reader grasps the analogies between Minucius and Mandrake and does not depend upon the existence of a third term. However, it could be said that he depends upon an extremely long series of third terms that exist in the general context of the book, some of which we have already examined: trickster, arm, image, and so on. We should therefore be able to show that each metaphor produced in FW is, in the last analysis, comprehensible because the entire book, read in different directions, actually furnishes the metonymic chains that justify it. We can test this hypothesis on the atomic element of FW, the pun, which constitutes a particular form of metaphor founded on subjacent chains of metonymies. |
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2.4. Morphology of the Meandertale |
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The pun constitutes a forced contiguity between two or more words: sang plus sans plus glorians plus riant makes 'Sanglorians'. |
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It is a contiguity made of reciprocal elisions, whose result is an ambiguous deformation; but, even in the form of fragments, there are words that nonetheless are related to one another. This forced contiguity frees a series of possible readingshence interpretationswhich lead to an ac- |
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