Hard to Swallow: James Joyce’s ‘Lestrygonians’ and the Literary Oesophagus

The upper alimentary canal is a significant body part in Ulysses (1922). In the schemata Joyce provided for the novel, its eighth episode, ‘Lestrygonians’, is given the ‘organ’ of ‘oesophagus’ while the ‘technic’ is listed as ‘peristaltic’, referring to the contraction and relaxation of muscles that push food through the digestive tract. While critics have revealed how the episode is Joyce’s most dedicated exploration of consumption, these readings have assumed smooth passage into – and out of – the gut, often mindful of Joyce’s remark, as reported by Frank Budgen, that ‘[i]n Lestrygonians the stomach dominates’. In this article, I offer a sustained focus on the oesophagus (or gullet as it is often termed) to demonstrate how this organ becomes central to Joyce’s aesthetic of the consuming body. In examining images of mastication, obstruction and regurgitation, my contention is that the episode’s thematic and aesthetic import rests on the disruption of the peristaltic process and a malfunctioning gullet – on what, in other words and in various senses, is hard to swallow.