by James Joyce

T. S. Eliot, Ulysses, Order and MythMr Joyce’s parallel use of the Odyssey has

the importance of a scientific discovery.In using the myth, in manipulating a

continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him.

It is a way of controlling, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.

Instead of narrative method we may now use the mythical method.

It is, I seriously believe, a step towards making the modern world possible for art...

UlyssesPrinciples on which the composition of the

book is based:

everything is equally significantany moment represents the life of an

individualconsciousness preserves memory of the

past, impression of the present, anticipation of the future

sometimes, we experience a sort of revelation

STRUCTURE 18 episodes divided into three sections:

1.(Episodes 1 – 3) Telemachia (Stephen Dedalus)

2.(Episodes 4 – 15) Odyssey (Leopold Bloom)

3.(Episodes 16 – 18) Nostos (Molly Bloom)

Each episode corresponds to a section of the Odyssey

1. Telemachus 2. Nestor3. Proteus4. Calypso5. Lotus Eaters6. Hades7. Aeolus8. Lestrygonians9. Scylla and Charybdis

10. Wandering Rocks11. Sirens12. Cyclops13. Nausicaa14. Oxen of the Sun15. Circe16. Eumaeus17. Ithaca 18. Penelope

PLOTLeopold Bloom leaves home at 8 o’clock on

Thursday morning and returns at 2 at night

In his wanderings he meets Stephen Dedalus, an artist

Few incidents occur. Stephen quarrels with some friends and leaves the place he lived in

Bloom buys breakfast, attends a funeral, goes to his office, visits the National Library, meets various people

Molly commits adultery in the afternoon

Bloom comes across Stephen several times during the day; he comes to know Stephen has quarrelled with his father and tries to help him. At midnight he rescues him from a brawl in a brothel and takes him home

They talk on various subjects. When Stephen leaves Leopold goes up to bed

Molly asks him questions about the day

He asks her to bring him breakfast to bed the following day and falls asleep

Molly’s monologue begins

CHARACTERSStephen Dedalus

a young Latin teacher, a prospective writer

already the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Here, in a critical moment for his future literary career

Leopold Bloomprobably modelled on the figure of Italo Svevo

a middle-aged man

a canvasser of Jewish origin

the plot has been interpreted as illustrating the main theme of a father looking for a son and a son looking for a father

Bloom has an adolescent daughter; his only son died 11 days after birth

Stephen: a surrogate for his missing fatherhood

Stephen has abandoned his irascible, alcoholic father

he is momentarily in search of a paternal figure

Both loveless, both exiles in their own country

Bloom has rejected the Jewish faith of his fathers, feels guilty for it

the quintessence of the exile: a Jew who has abandoned his faith

he is betrayed by his wife

Stephen has rejected the Catholic faith of his mother, feels guilty for it

he is disgusted by the nationalism of his compatriots, feels excluded from their solidarity

he can’t live with his family any more, is preparing to make a decision and leave Dublin

representatives of two opposite ways of life

Leopold

the citizen, the bourgeois

characterized by patience, a sound attitude to life, tolerance, intellectual curiosity; a reliable person

the average modern man, an anti-hero

most episodes are seen from his point of view or directly through his mind

Stephen

the artist who prizes freedom above all

like Daedalus, one day he will fly with his own wings

he also has the defects of the artist: he is selfish, self-involved, thinks mainly in terms of himself

Molly Bloom

a good-looking, sensual woman in her maturity

chronically unfaithful to her husband

ironically alluded to as Penelope

SETTINGDublin, on a single day: 16.June, 1904

a middle-sized city, where it is not unlikely that different people may meet during the day

limitations of the setting: give the story a symbolic dimension; it is like drama, with its unity of time and place

STYLE AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Interior monologueWilliam James, Principles of Psychology

(1890)

Consciousness “does not appear to itself chopped up in bits… (but) flows like a river or a stream. Hence let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness”

Stream-of-consciousness fiction is concerned with the area which is normally beyond communication:

what the mental process is started by and what it consists of (memories, dreams, impressions, sensations, intuitions)

how it works (symbols, association of ideas, juxtaposition of images)

Interior monologue: the literary instrument used to translate that phenomenon into words

Dorothy Richardson was a pioneer in the technique, which was then fully developed by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf

Two main types:

indirect interior monologue- introduced by such clauses as he thought,

he decided, she understood, she realized- third-person narrator- rational links for the association of ideas- external ordering mind even if the

perspective is internal(some critics call this “interior monologue”)

direct interior monologue

- in first person- sudden shifts from thought to thought- no apparent connection- no evident intervention of the ordering

mind of a narrator- direct access to the mind of the

character(some critics call this “stream of

consciousness”)

but every episode of the book tries to reproduce a specific technique or a special phenomenon

just as every episode is linked to one episode in the Odyssey, an organ, a colour, a symbol, an art

cf. Gilbert’s scheme

BBC clips by actors on Ulysses

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00tq04l