Ulysses

James Joyce

The writer, a life of permanent exile

● James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 into a middle-class family.● On the 16th of June he met for the first time Nora Barnacle, his

future wife.● They moved first to Paris,then to Pola in 1904 and finally to Trieste.● In Trieste he finished his first important works: “Dubliners” and “A

portrait of the artist as a young man”(1916).● At the outbreak of World War I, the Joyces left for Zurich, where he

started working on his masterpiece,Ulysses.● In 1920 they moved to Paris where he wrote his last great novel,

“Finnegans Wake”.● In 1940 Joyce and his family returned to Zurich where he died in

1941.

Setting

Time  :  8:00 A.M., June 16, 1904–approximately 3 A.M., June 17, 1904

Place Dublin, Ireland, and its surrounding suburbs

PlotThe book consists of 18 chapters,each covering roughly one hour of the day,beginning around 8 a.m. and ending sometime after 2 a.m.

Section 1 (Chapters 1-3): The focus is on Stephen Dedalus, a young aspiring writer who has just returned from Paris. This section presents Stephen's life on a typical day in which he finds Dublin depressing. He is pessimistic about realizing his dream to become a published author.

Section 2 (Chapters 4-15): The focus is on Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising representative. This section presents his voyage through an ordinary day in Dublin. Joyce describes in detail both Dublin and Bloom, presenting his free-flowing thoughts–many of them either about his unfaithful wife, Molly, or other women.

Section 3 (Chapters 16-18): The focus is on Leopold, Stephen, and Molly. Bloom and Dedalus meet each other. Dedalus goes to Bloom's home and talks with him for several hours. The novel ends with a chapter on Molly.

Characters

Stephen Dedalus -  An aspiring poet in his early twenties. Stephen is intelligent and extremely well-read, and he likes music. He seems to exist more for himself, in a cerebral way, than as a member of a community or even the group of medical students that he associates with. Stephen was extremely religious as a child, but now he struggles with issues of faith and doubt in the wake of his mother’s death, which occurred less than a year ago.

Leopold Bloom -  A thirty-eight-year-old advertising canvasser in Dublin. Bloom was raised in Dublin by his Hungarian Jewish father, Rudolph, and his Irish

Catholic mother, Ellen. He enjoys reading and thinking about science and inventions and explaining his

knowledge to others. Bloom is compassionate and curious and loves music. He is preoccupied by his

estrangement from his wife, Molly.

Marion (Molly) Bloom -  Leopold Bloom’s wife. Molly Bloom is thirty-three years old, plump with dark coloring, good-looking, and flirtatious. She is not well-educated, but she is nevertheless clever and opinionated. She is a professional singer, raised by her Irish father, Major Brian Tweedy, in Gibraltar. Molly is impatient with Bloom, especially about his refusal to be intimate with her since the death of their son, Rudy, eleven years ago.

Themes● The quest for paternity: At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephen’s

search for a symbolic father and Bloom’s search for a son. In this respect, the plot of Ulysses parallels Telemachus’s search for Odysseus, and vice versa, in The Odyssey. Their search for a son stems at least in part from his need to reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny.

● The remorse of coscience:● The theme of remorse runs through Ulysses to address the

feelings associated with modern breaks with family and tradition. Though remorse of conscience can have a repressive, paralyzing effect, it is also vaguely positive. A self-conscious awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps constitute an individual as an ethical being in the present.

● Parallax, or the need for multiple perspective:

●As a novel, Ulysses uses a tactic similar to that of the astronomical parallax.Three main characters—Stephen, Bloom, and Molly—and a subset of narrative techniques that affect our perception of events and characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility of one single perspective.

Ulysses-Odissey

● Ulysses is closely modelled on the Odyssey● The ancient epic ironically played against the

modern is one of the key elements of the book.● The use of the ancient myth stresses the

limitations and lack of heroism of the modern novel.

Narrative tecnique● Shifting of the narrator and of the point of view● Stream of consciousness: the reader is put inside

a character's mind to reveal perceptions,thoughts,and feelings. The most representative example of this tecnique is Molly's interiore monologue. There aren't external events described,and there isn't a third person narrator,no paragraphs,no punctuation,no subordinate sentences that can suggest an order.

Molly's interiore monologue I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr

Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly, (...)0h that awful deepdown torrent 0 and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Molly’s monologue

Pensavo a tante cose che lui non sapeva di Mulvey e Mr Stanhope e Hester e papà e il vecchio capitano Groves e i marinai che giocavano al piattello e alla cavallina(...)Oh quel pauroso torrente laggiù in fondo oh e il mare il mare qualche volta cremisi come il fuoco e gli splendidi tramonti e i fichi nei giardini dell'Alameda sì e tutte quelle stradine curiose e le case rosa e azzurre e gialle e i roseti e i gelsomini e i geranii e i cactus e Gibilterra da ragazza dov'ero un fior di montagna sì quando mi misi la rosa nei capelli come facevano le ragazze andaluse o ne porterò una rossa sì e come mi baciò sotto il muro moresco e io pensavo bè lui ne vale un altro e poi gli chiesi con gli occhi di chiedere ancora sì e allora mi chiese se io volevo sì dire sì mio fior di montagna e per prima cosa gli misi le braccia intorno sì e me lo tirai addosso in modo che mi potesse sentire il petto profumato sì e il suo cuore batteva come impazzito e sì dissi sì voglio Sì.