Broadcloth back
Broadcloth
back
In Brief
Figure of speech. When William Brayden passes
through the office in which Bloom is talking to Red Murray,
the narrative says that his back, rather than he, climbed a
staircase: "The broadcloth back ascended each step: back."
Theorists of rhetoric and poetry call this kind of figurative
speech synecdoche: using a part to represent the
whole, or vice versa.
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Synecdoche (sih-NEK-duh-kee, from Greek syn- = with + ex- = from, out of + dekhesthai = to take, take up) means "to take up with or from something else"––i.e., to use one thing to convey the sense of another. That etymology links it with metaphor, in which one thing stands for something not normally associated with it. It is even more closely related to metonymy: in both figures no discovery of resemblance is implied, just a preexisting experiential connection that hearers can readily consult to translate one term into another. Thus people say "wheels" to mean a car, "head" for cattle, "hired hands" for workers, "silverware" for all kinds of cutlery, "ivories" for piano keys, "the bottle" for drinking, "a good ear" for musical ability, and "Bandaid" for adhesive bandages in general. Somewhat less frequently, a whole can refer to a part, as when "the law" means policemen, "going to the movies" means going to see a film, "speak truth to power" means taking on powerful people, and "Boston won last night" means "the Red Sox won."When the editor of the Freeman's Journal enters the scene in Aeolus, a headline identifies him properly as "WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT." The narrative, however, presents him as a passing collection of body parts: "The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck. / — Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.... rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart." Only the first sentence can properly be said to employ synecdoche, but the spirit of reducing something to its parts animates the entire passage, and it seems possible that Joyce deliberately added to his father's joke about Brayden's brains dwelling in the fat folds of his neck another small joke about the rhetorical device he was employing: it is sy-neck-doche.
