Ulysses, the novel by James Joyce, chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer’s Odyssey (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate June 16 as Bloomsday.
Ulysses totals about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words (including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into 18 “episodes”. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual “Joyce Wars.” Ulysses’ stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
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Episode 1, Telemachus It is 8 a.m. on the morning of 16 June 1904 (the day Joyce first formally went out with Nora Barnacle). Buck Mulligan (a callous, verbally aggressive and boisterous medical student) calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer first encountered in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) up to the roof of the Martello tower, Sandycove, overlooking Dublin bay. Stephen doesn’t respond to Mulligan’s aggressive and intrusive jokes. Stephen is focused on, and initially disdainful toward, Haines (a nondescript, anti-semitic Englishman from Oxford), whom Buck Mulligan invited around. Stephen’s annoyance stems from the intrusion, as he was disturbed the previous night by Haines’s moaning about a nightmare. Mulligan and Dedalus proceed to look out over the sea, and Stephen is reminded of his deceased mother, for whom he is visibly still in mourning. This, and Stephen’s refusal to pray at his mother’s deathbed, remains an issue of some contention between the two. Stephen reveals that he once overheard Buck referring to his mother as “beastly dead.” When faced with this, Buck makes a brief attempt to defend himself, but gives up shortly. He shaves and prepares breakfast, then all three eat. Buck then departs, and sings to himself, unknowingly, the song that Stephen once sang to his dying mother. Later, Haines and Stephen walk down to the water, where Buck and his companions are swimming. We here learn that Buck has an absent friend from Westmeath who has a yet-unnamed girlfriend (later revealed to be Milly Bloom). Stephen declares his intention to depart, and Buck demands the house key and to be lent money. Departing, Stephen declares that he will not return to the tower tonight, citing Buck as a “Usurper.”
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15 May 2009 at 10:17 am
I’m so glad you chose this book! I read it in college, but have never revisited it (despite the best intentions).
I think Joyce was way ahead of his time with this book. Can you imagine how rich it would be if he had been able to provide links for all of the allusions, puns, etc. to elucidate the stream of consciousness? Then again, maybe he really wanted to be obtuse; providing context via hyperlinks would have ruined the fun…plus then what would the Joyce scholars have to argue about? Oh yeah…Finnegan’s Wake!