notes on ulysses
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Notes on Ulysses. by James Joyce. T. S. Eliot, Ulysses, Order and Myth. Mr Joyce ’ s parallel use of the Odyssey has the importance of a scientific discovery. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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