Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American
journal The Little Reviewfrom March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety
by Sylvia Beach in February 1922, in Paris. It is considered to be one of the most important works
of modernist literature,[1] and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire
movement".[2] According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the
process of thinking."[3]However, even proponents of Ulysses such as Anthony Burgess have described
the book as "inimitable, and also possibly mad".[4]
Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the
course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.[5] Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero
of Homer's epic poem Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between its characters
and events and those of the poem (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly
Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus).
Ulysses is approximately 265,000 words in length, uses a lexicon of 30,030 words (including proper
names, plurals and various verb tenses),[6] and is divided into eighteen 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
prosefull 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 1998, the Modern
Library ranked Ulysses first on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th
century.[7] Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.

Background[edit]
Joyce first encountered Odysseus in Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulyssesan adaptation of
the Odyssey for children, which seemed to establish the Roman name in Joyce's mind. At school he
wrote an essay on Ulysses entitled "My Favourite Hero".[8][9] Joyce told Frank Budgen that he
considered Ulysses the only all-round character in literature.[10]He thought about calling Dubliners by the
name Ulysses in Dublin,[11] but the idea grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, to a "short book" in
1907,[12] to the vast novel that he began in 1914.

Structure[edit]
Joyce divided Ulysses into 18 chapters or "episodes". At first glance much of the book may appear
unstructured and chaotic; Joyce once said that he had "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will
keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant," which would earn the novel
"immortality".[13] The two schemata which Stuart Gilbert and Herbert Gorman released after publication
to defend Joyce from the obscenity accusations made the links to the Odyssey clear, and also
explained the work's internal structure.Every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique, and
correspondence between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The original text did not include
these episode titles and the correspondences; instead, they originate from
the Linati and Gilbert schemata. Joyce referred to the episodes by their Homeric titles in his letters. He
took the idiosyncratic rendering of some of the titles'Nausikaa', the 'Telemachia'from Victor
Brard's two-volume Les Phniciens et lOdysse which he consulted in 1918 in the Zentralbibliothek
Zrich.

Gilbert schema for Ulysses

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This schema for the novel Ulysses was produced by its author, James Joyce, in 1921 to help his friend,
Stuart Gilbert, understand the fundamental structure of the book. Gilbert published it in 1930 in his
book, James Joyce's "Ulysses": A Study. The original copy of the Gilbert schema is housed in
the Harley K. Croessmann Collection of James Joyce atSouthern Illinois University Carbondale.

Title

Scene

Hou
r

Organ

Colour

Symbol

Art

Technic

Telemachus

The
Tower

8am -

White / go
Heir
ld

Theology

Narrative (young)

Nestor

The
School

10a
m

Brown

Horse

History

Catechism (personal)

Proteus

The
Strand

11a
m

Green

Tide

Philology

Monologue (male)

Calypso

The
House

8am Kidney

Orange

Nymph

Economics

Narrative (mature)

Lotus Eaters

The
Bath

10a
Genitals
m

Eucharist

Botany / chemi
Narcissism
stry

Hades

The
11a
Graveya
Heart
m
rd

White / bl
Caretaker
ack

Religion

Incubism

Aeolus

The
12p
Newspa
Lungs
m
per

Red

Editor

Rhetoric

Enthymemic

Lestrygonians

The
Lunch

Constables

Architecture

Peristaltic

Scylla and Chary The

bdis
Library

Wandering

The

1pm

Oesophag
us

2pm Brain

Stratford / Lon
Literature
don

Dialectic

3pm Blood

Citizens

Labyrinth

Mechanics

Rocks

Streets

Sirens

The
Concert 4pm Ear
Room

Barmaids

Music

Fuga per canonem

Cyclops

The
Tavern

5pm Muscle

Fenian

Politics

Gigantism

Nausicaa

The
Rocks

8pm Eye, nose

Grey / blu
Virgin
e

Painting

Tumescence / detumes
cence

Oxen of the Sun

The
10p
Womb
Hospital m

White

Mothers

Medicine

Embryonic developme
nt

Circe

The
Brothel

Locomot
12a
or
m
apparatus

Whore

Magic

Hallucination

Eumaeus

The
Shelter

1am Nerves

Sailors

Navigation

Narrative (old)

Ithaca

The
House

2am Skeleton -

Comets

Science

Catechism (impersonal
)

Penelope

The Bed -

Earth

Monologue (female)

Flesh