Advisory Committee Chair
John W Hutchings
Advisory Committee Members
Leonard K Grimes
Edward W Hook Iii
P Kieran Quinlan
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2013
Degree Name by School
Master of Arts (MA) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Denis Breen, a minor character in James Joyce's Ulysses, receives an unsigned postcard which reads "U.p: up". Scholars consider "U.p: up" to be a joke encoded in a puzzle or riddle. This paper proposes to decode the postcard message "U.p: up" and to identify its author. The postcard message "U.p: up" is read "you pee up" and refers to Denis Breen's unusual urination. Denis Breen "pees up" or sprays his urine upward when urinating from a standing position because he has hypospadias and his urethral opening is within or behind his testes. The symbol "p:" in the message "U.p: up" depicts the penis and testes of Denis Breen, and the "twoheaded octopus" symbolizes Breen's hypospadiac testicles. Breen's diagnosis of hypo-"spade"-ias is confirmed by Breen's dream of the ace of spades going upstairs. C.P. ("See Pee") M'Coy saw Breen's unusual urination and cryptically wrote Breen the postcard message "U.p: up". Joyce parodied Sigmund Freud and his theories when he created Denis Breen. In particular, Joyce parodied the Freudian vehicle of using a proper name to tell a joke when he made the name Denis Breen condense into the Freudian phrase "penis envy." Joyce also used the actual location of Freud's apple-sized boil (within or behind his testicles) as the situs of Breen's hypospadias. Finally, Joyce modeled the postcard message "U.p: up" upon Freud's dream of urinating in an upward direction.
Recommended Citation
Bowron, Leah Harper, "The Pusillanimous Denis: What "U.p: up" Really Breens" (2013). All ETDs from UAB. 1229.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/1229