Religious Pharmakons In James Joyce's The Sisters

Religious Pharmakons in "The Sisters"
The introduction of semiotics in 19__ enabled structural critics to consider literature in terms of its constitutive qualities rather than its contextual significance (__). However, this view of literature failed to address the disunity and instability of language by asserting that each sign possesses a singular and stable referent that can only be derived from its negative relationship with other signs (Derrida ___). In order to embrace the overlooked inconstancy of language, Derrida argued that each sign actually possesses an infinite number of conflicting meanings which arise from the arbitrary nature of the sign itself, not its relationship with other signs (Derrida__). As a result, literary analysis

Furthermore, the priest's belief in the transcendent quality of the chalice appears to have wavered as it is no longer described as an active symbol of redemption but "idle" (Joyce 11) when laid upon the breast of his dead body. Although it is not clear whether he committed desecration by deliberately breaking the chalice, or "it was the boy's fault" (Joyce 11), the sign of the chalice itself clearly acts as a pharmakon by simultaneously symbolising the possibility of the priest's atonement as well as his sinful rejection of

Therefore, the allegorically significant room is seen to both embody the light and grace of God when "the clerk and Father O'Rourke and another priest" (Joyce 11) enter, but remain locked and "dark" (11) when the priest, accused of desecration and sexual misconduct, sits in there alone. This contrast between the light of divinity and the darkness of the damned signifies that the confession box is both an area of absolution and of sinful