Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a 1922 novel by James Joyce that takes its title from the Latin version of the Greek name 'Odysseus'. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century. The book has been the subject of much scrutiny, criticism and controversy.

The eighteen chapters

Most chapters of Ulysses have an assigned theme, technique and, tellingly, correspondences between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The chapter titles and the correspondences were not included in the original text, but derive from the Linati and Gilbert schema.

Related Topics:
Linati - Gilbert

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The Telemachia:

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• Telemachus
• Nestor
• Proteus

The Odyssey:

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• Calypso
• Lotus-Eaters
• Hades
• Aeolus
• Lestrygonians
• Scylla and Charybdis
• The Wandering Rocks
• Sirens
• Cyclops
• Nausicaa
• Oxen of the Sun
• Circe

The Nostos:

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• Eumaeus
• Ithaca
• Penelope

The Telemachia

Telemachus

It is morning. The book opens inside a Martello tower on Dublin Bay at Sandycove, where three young men, Buck Mulligan (a callous, verbally aggressive and boisterous medical student), Stephen Dedalus (a young writer first encountered in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Haines (a nondescript Englishman from Oxford) have just woken and are preparing for the day. Stephen, brooding about the recent death of his mother, complains about Haines' hysterical nightmares. Mulligan shaves and prepares breakfast and all three then eat. Haines decides to go to the library and Mulligan suggests swimming beforehand; all three then leave the tower. Walking for a time, Stephen chats with Haines and smokes before leaving, deciding that he cannot return to the tower that evening for Mulligan has usurped his place.

Related Topics:
Martello tower - Dublin Bay - Sandycove - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Oxford - Death - Nightmare - Breakfast - Library

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Nestor

Stephen is at school, attempting to teach bored schoolboys history and English, though they are unappreciative of his efforts. Stephen attempts to tell a riddle which falls flat before seeing the boys out of the classroom. One stays behind so that Stephen may show him how to do a set of arithmetic exercises. Afterwards Stephen visits the school headmaster, Mr. Deasy, from whom he collects his pay and a letter to take to a newspaper office for printing.

Related Topics:
History - English - Riddle - Arithmetic - Deasy

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Proteus

Next, Stephen finds his way to the strand and mopes around for some time, doing little more than thinking, reminiscing and walking about on the beach. He lies down among some rocks, watches a couple and a dog, writes some poetry ideas, picks his nose and possibly has a sexual experience.

Related Topics:
Dog - Poetry - Sexual

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The Odyssey

Calypso

The role of protagonist suddenly shifts to Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser living nearby in Eccles street preparing breakfast at the same time as Mulligan in the tower. He walks to a butcher to purchase a kidney for his breakfast and returns to finish his cooking. He takes his wife, Molly Bloom, her breakfast and letters and reads his own letter from their daughter, Milly. The chapter closes with his plodding to the outhouse to defecate.

Related Topics:
Protagonist - Jew - Advertising - Kidney

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Lotus-Eaters

Bloom now begins his day proper, furtively making his way to a post office (by an intentionally indirect route), where he receives a love letter from one 'Martha Clifford' addressed to his pseudonym, 'Henry Flower'. He buys a newspaper and meets an acquaintance; while they chat he attempts to ogle a woman wearing stockings, but is prevented by a passing tram. Next, he reads the letter and tears the envelope up in an alley. Bloom makes his exit via a Catholic church service and thinks about what is going on inside it. He goes to a drugstore then meets another acquaintance, Bantam, whom he unintentionally gives a racing tip for the horse Throwaway. Finally, Bloom ponders his naked state in water as he approaches the baths to wash for the rest of the day.

Related Topics:
Pseudonym - Tram - Catholic church - Naked - Water

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This chapter is the first with obvious motifs, and these are those of botany, religion, drugs, potions, and guilt and murder.

Related Topics:
Motif - Botany - Religion - Drug - Potion - Guilt - Murder

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Hades

The episode begins with Bloom entering a funeral carriage with three others, including Stephen's father Simon Dedalus. They make their way to Dignam's funeral, passing Stephen and making small talk on the way. Bloom scans his newspaper. They talk about various deaths, forms of death and the tramline before arriving and getting out. They enter the chapel into the service and subsequently leave with the coffincart. Bloom sees a mysterious anonymous man wearing a mackintosh during the burial and ponders on various subjects some more. Leaving, he points out a dent in a friend's hat.

Related Topics:
Funeral - Simon Dedalus - Mackintosh - Hat

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The main motifs of this episode are death and decay.

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Aeolus

At the newspaper office, Bloom attempts to place an ad, while Stephen arrives bringing Deasy's letter about hoof and mouth disease. The two do not meet. The episode is broken up into short sections by newspaper-style headlines, and is characterized by its deliberate abundance of rhetorical figures and devices. Lenehan and Corley appear in this section.

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Lestrygonians

Bloom searches for lunch, eventually settling down to a vegetarian lunch at Davy Byrnes's.

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Scylla and Charybdis

At the National Library, Stephen explains to various scholars his biographical theory of the works of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, whereby they are based largely on the posited adultery of Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway. Bloom enters the library to look at some statues on exhibit, but does not encounter Stephen.

Related Topics:
Shakespeare - Hamlet - Anne Hathaway

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The Wandering Rocks

In this episode, 19 short vignettes depict the wanderings of various characters, major and minor, through the streets of Dublin. It ends with an account of the cavalcade of the Lord Lieutenant, William Humble, Earl of Dudley, through the streets, where it is encountered by the various characters we have in the episode. Neither Stephen nor Bloom sees the Viceroy's procession.

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This chapter is unique in that it draws Homeric parallels to an instance that is described third hand in The Odyssey. That is to say, the Wandering Rocks are spoken about in The Odyssey, but never experienced by its protagonist, Odysseus. This is perhaps why Joyce disembodies the narrative from the three main characters.

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Sirens

In this episode, dominated by motifs of music, Bloom has dinner with Stephen's uncle Richie Goulding at the Ormond Hotel, while Blazes Boylan proceeds to his rendezvous with Molly. While dining, Bloom watches the seductive barmaids Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy, and listens to the singing of Simon Dedalus, and others.

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Cyclops

This chapter is narrated largely by an unnamed denizen of Dublin. He runs into Hynes and they enter a pub for a drink. At the pub, they meet Alf Bergan and a character referred to only as the 'citizen.' Eventually, Leopold Bloom enters waiting to meet Martin Cunningham. The Citizen is discovered to be a fierce fenian and begins berating Bloom. The atmosphere quickly becomes anti-Semitic and Bloom escapes upon Cunningham's arrival. The chapter is marked by extended digressions made outside the voice of the unnamed narrator - hyperboles of legal jargon, Biblical passages, Irish mythology, etc., with lists of names often extending half a page. 'Cyclops' refers both to the narrator who is often quoted with 'says I' and the citizen who fails to see the folly of his narrow-minded thinking.

Related Topics:
Fenian - Jargon - Biblical

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Nausicaa

Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boarman, and Gerty MacDowell start the chapter off on the strand near a church. Gerty often daydreams of finding someone to love her. Eventually, Bloom appears and they begin to flirt from a distance. The women are about to leave when the fireworks start. Cissy and Edy leave to get a better view, but Gerty remains. She shows off her legs to Bloom, who, as it turns out, is masturbating. Gerty then leaves, revealing herself to be lame, and leaving Bloom meditating on the beach. The first half of the episode is marked by an excessively sentimental style, and it is unclear how much of Gerty's monologue is actually imagined by Bloom.

Related Topics:
Fireworks - Leg - Masturbating

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Oxen of the Sun

Bloom visits the maternity hospital where Mina Purefoy is giving birth, and finally meets Stephen, who is drinking with Buck Mulligan and his medical student friends. They continue on to a pub to continue drinking, following the successful birth of the baby. This chapter is remarkable for Joyce's wordplay, which seems to recapitulate the entire history of human language to describe a scene in an obstetrics hospital, from the Carmen Arvale:

Related Topics:
Language - Obstetrics - Carmen Arvale

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:Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.

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to something resembling alliterative Anglo-Saxon poetry:

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:In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she dread that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.

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and on through skilful parodies of Malory, the King James Bible, Bunyan, Pepys, Defoe, Addison and Steele, Sterne, Goldsmith, Junius, Gibbon, Lamb, De Quincey, Landor, Dickens, Newman, Ruskin and Carlyle, among others, before concluding in a haze of nearly incomprehensible slang. Indeed, Joyce organized this chapter as three sections divided into nine total subsections, representing the trimesters and months of gestation.

Related Topics:
Malory - King James Bible - Bunyan - Pepys - Defoe - Addison - Steele - Sterne - Goldsmith - Junius - Gibbon - Lamb - De Quincey - Landor - Dickens - Newman - Ruskin - Carlyle

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Circe

In an extended hallucinatory sequence, Bloom and Stephen go to Bella Cohen's brothel. This episode, the longest in the novel, is written in the form of a play. Molly?s letter from Boylan and his from Martha are reworked into a series of seductive letters ending in a trial. His sexual infidelities beginning with Lotty Clarke and ending with Gerty McDowell are relived and reconciled.

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The Nostos

Eumaeus

Bloom and Stephen go to the cabman's shelter to eat, and encounter a drunken sailor.

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Ithaca

Bloom returns home with Stephen, who refuses Bloom's offer of a place to stay for the night. The two men urinate in the backyard, Stephen goes home, and Bloom goes to bed. The episode is written in the form of a rigidly organized catechism, and was reportedly Joyce's favourite episode in the novel.

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Penelope

The final chapter of Ulysses consists of Molly Bloom's Soliloquy: eight enormous sentences (without punctuation) written from the viewpoint of Leopold Bloom's estranged wife, Molly (who represents Penelope).

Related Topics:
Molly Bloom's Soliloquy - Penelope

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