"What's Worth Risking Eternal Damnation for": modernism, language and the social impact of art in the works of James Joyce, Hozier, and Lil Nas X

Abstract

This research investigates the notion of human sexuality in selected modernist literary works from James Joyce to postmodern music by Hozier and Lil Nas X regarding the criticism of institutionalized beliefs and the depiction of sexualities. From the sexual and spiritual awakening in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to the public onanism scene in Ulysses, Joyce has intensified one's apostasy and sexuality by optimizing and experimenting with the multiplicity of the meaning of words. The postmodern music selected for analysis which comprises a mid-tempo soul song titled "Take Me to Church" by Andrew John Hozier-Byrne, and a hip hop electropop song named "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" by Montero Lamar Hill, known by his stage name Lil Nas X, construe the similar conceptualization via the presence of visual media. Regarding the subject matter of the social impact of art, the study approaches the mentioned works from Joyce, Hozier, and Lil Nas X as politically figurative novels and songs. By rejecting the “highbrow” and “lowbrow” hierarchical position of literary works, this study reevaluates the value of modernist and postmodernist arts and their interconnectedness. While Joyce insinuates his agnostic belief and attacks the Roman Catholic Church in A Portrait and Ulysses, Hozier's and Hill's works deprecate the Catholic Church's indoctrination and challenge the notion of sexualities as being regulated by biological factors and cultural and social influences. Hence, I argue in this research that modernism’s spirit has survived and expanded through time. Postmodern music, as part of postmodernism, has embraced some modernist characteristics and transcends the limitation of modernist works. Joyce’s attempts to celebrate human sexualities in the early 20th century; are, nonetheless, relevant to postmodern music artists. While Joyce vacillates between the binary opposition of the two sexes, Hozier’s and Hill’s works can be interpreted as an outstretch of art’s capacity to represent diverse sexualities beyond the dominant cultural view of gender two-sex model.