Notes on Ulysses

1. Notes on Ulysses by James Joyce

2. T. S. Eliot, Ulysses, Order and Myth • Mr 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.

3. 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...

4. Ulysses Principles on which the composition of the book is based: • everything is equally significant • any moment represents the life of an individual • consciousness preserves memory of the past, impression of the present, anticipation of the future • sometimes, we experience a sort of revelation

5. STRUCTURE 18 episodes divided into three sections: • (Episodes 1 – 3) Telemachia (Stephen Dedalus) • (Episodes 4 – 15) Odyssey (Leopold Bloom) • (Episodes 16 – 18) Nostos (Molly Bloom)

6. Each episode corresponds to a section of the Odyssey

7. PLOT Leopold 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. CHARACTERS Stephen 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

11. Leopold Bloom probably modelled on the figure of Italo Svevo a middle-aged man a canvasser of Jewish origin

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. Molly Bloom a good-looking, sensual woman in her maturity chronically unfaithful to her husband ironically alluded to as Penelope

17. SETTING Dublin, 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

18. STYLE AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES Interior monologue William 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”

19. Stream-of-consciousness fiction isconcerned 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)

20. 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

21. 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”)

22. 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”)

23. 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

24. BBC clips by actors on Ulysses http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00tq04l