FINNEGANS WAKE
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Isis. And in this way the word "ram" would take on its full sig–
nificance only
in
relation to the play as a whole.
Is such a use of language what we usually describe as pun–
ning? Several of Joyce's reviewers have been content to leave the
matter at that. But there are obviously puns and puns; we say that
some are pointless, some make sense. Undoubtedly, Joyce allows
a certain number of the pointless variety to creep into his book–
if for no other reason than that pointlessness is one of the inherent
capacities of the human mind. What shall we say, however, of those
words which, like Cleopatra's "ram", begin to make sense only
when we relate them to other things in the work. For example,
there is the line, "My cold cher's gone Ashley". It has probably
been already pointed out that "cher" makes at least three associa–
tions
in
the mind: it is the name of a river at Oxford, and its sound
suggests both the French word for "flesh" and the English word
for a common article of furniture. Even within the limited context
of the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" episode it is possible to establish
some connections. For "Cher", like Ashley in the same passage, is
simply one of the innumerable names of the one river that is Time;
flesh is identical with earth through which Time passes as History;
and "chair" may refer either to the bankside on which the washer–
woman is sitting or to the earth as a whole. It would seem, then,
that if this is punning it is a very special kind of punning. And for
the kind of pun that accomplishes a meaningful fusion between
disparate things we have the term metaphor. The important differ–
ence between the ordinary or mechanical pun and the metaphor is
that where the first is content with the purely intellectual percep–
tion of the accidental formal resemblances between words the sec–
ond is concerned not only with more essential resemblances but
with putting these together into a new whole. The first is the work
of the abstract intellect, the second of the imagination.
In classical rhetoric the device by which a part is used for the
whole or the whole for a part is called synecdoche. This is the
device we use in common speech when we refer to a workingman
as a "hand" or to spring as the "year". Synecdoche is only one of
the devices of rhetoric; metonymy is another; and the dictionary
defines metonymy as that figure of speech in which "not the literal
word but one associated with it is used; as, the 'sword' for war".
But the distinction is a rather quibbling one, for "hands" are asso-
