Reality Perception
A warning to the navigators:
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the prevailing way to deal with the subject is under the paradigm established under Gutenberg's invention that he gave birth,i.e., the printed book
Marshall McLuhan is probably the best author when it comes to discuss this subject. Specially in his The Gutenberg Galaxy. Although he proposes four epochs in history under this paradigm:
Oral tribe culture
Manuscript culture
Gutenberg galaxy
Electronic age
From the stand point of view of perception of reality we have just two:
Oral and Visual
Although Visual is splitting in two self contained paradigms, it is safe to use the definition in the New World Encyclopedia:
Visual Culture is human culture based on visual media — pictures, sculpture, and (sometimes) dance— as opposed to oral culture and print culture, based on language, words, and writing.
But Visual can also be understood as:<
There is a myriad of possibilities because we are simply discussing the basic feature that distinguishes us form the animal kingdom and made us what we are: Conscience. Which has evolved from our consciousness capabilities.
Since the objective is to link to James Joyce, we will treat the subject under the Aristotle definition:
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Which is what we do with our consciousness. An it is no coincidence that Joyce uses STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. technique.
We will use a few forms to do that, but the best start is with painting.
The best illustrating way by painting to have an idea how it was under the oral culture is The School of Athens.
And fairly how it was transformed by Gutenberg's invention it is Historical Painting with Wikipedia Links & Mouse Over Tagging by the Chinese Artists Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An, 2006, oil on canvas.
To better understand Joyce's place to literature, let's take a look on its equivalent to painting,
Before we proceed to examine other types of consciousness, better yet, inward significance forms of thinking, let's establish that this project at this moment will use selected portions of the text to make points. A full text analysis under the selected consciousness possibilities although in principle possible, will be not the case for this moment.