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All The Beef To The Heels Were In: Advertising And Plenty In Joyce's Ulysses, Mindy Jo Ratcliff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Privileging a historicist approach, this document explores the presence of consumer culture, particularly advertising, in James Joyce's seminal modernist novel, Ulysses (1922). It interrogates Joyce's awareness of how a broad upswing in Ireland's post-Famine economy precipitated advertising-intensive consumerism in both rural and urban Ireland. Foci include the late-nineteenth century transition in agriculture from arable farming to cattle-growing (grazier pastoralism), which, spurring economic growth, facilitated the emergence of a strong farmer rural bourgeoisie. The thesis considers how Ulysses inscribes and critiques that relatively affluent coterie's expenditures on domestic cultural tourism, as well as hygiene-related products, whose presence on the Irish scene …