Ulysses Review ⭐

‘Ulysses’ is notorious for being too long, inaccessible, and difficult to understand. James Joyce famously joked that he intentionally misrepresented various sections of the book to confound readers and critics alike for his amusement. Behind these layers of literary complexity, Joyce crafts a riveting modernist tale that pays homage to Homer’s ‘Odyssey.’

Style of Prose

James Joyce is renowned for his innovative use of language and pursuit of fresh literary techniques in ‘Ulysses’ which featured internal monologue, a sophisticated web of symbolic connections, and coined terms.

While the Irish theme permeated ‘Ulysses’, Joyce’s literary style varied from one to the next. He frequently experimented with diction, solo speeches, and soliloquies. Using intricate concepts and creative symbolism was another typical tactic. In ‘Ulysses’, Joyce frequently used Irish slang, but he also frequently used puns, allegories, and euphemisms to give his characters a more contemporary and genuine feel.

When Joyce first started writing, art was more grounded in reality than in fantasy. He aimed to apply realistic principles to his works. Joyce incorporated the idea of stream of consciousness into his realist style. He thought that people underestimated the significance of simple chores. One subject that runs across many of his works is that even something so simple and uncomplicated can be considered to be a significant art. This approach was frequently used by Joyce in the monologues and soliloquies of his characters.

Symbolism in Ulysses

James Joyce repeatedly used seemingly innocuous symbols to give depth to the story of ‘Ulysses’. An example of this is Episode 15. In Episode 15, Bloom’s potato serves the same purpose as Odysseus’s use of “moly” in Circe’s den: it shields him from enchantment, which Bloom falls prey to when he momentarily lends it to Zoe Higgins. The now-shriveled potato is a keepsake from Bloom’s mother, Ellen. It alluded to Bloom’s worries about reproduction and his family line as an organic product that was once both a fruit and a root but is now withered. The potato’s association with Ireland, though, is what matters most; Bloom’s potato talisman represents his largely disregarded maternal Irish lineage.

Joyce also plays with this literary device with crossed keys. In ‘Ulysses’, crossed keys serve as a metaphor for both paternity and the stability of one’s own home or country. Bloom wants to be Stephen’s father to get back with his son, Rudy. In addition, he desires control over his house and the love of his wife. Stephen and Bloom both leave the house without their keys on June 16. Bloom forgets his latchkey as Buck nags Stephen for the Martello Tower key. The symbol of the interlocked keys denotes their unfinished union as father and son. Usurpers have taken over both of their homes: Haines has snuck into Stephen’s home, and Boylan will infiltrate Bloom and Molly’s bed.

James Joyce’s use of Intertextuality in Ulysses

Being a profoundly intertextual novel, ‘Ulysses’ meaning is heavily reliant on its frequent allusions to other literary works. Numerous additional novels are cited in ‘Ulysses’, but because Joyce hardly ever makes explicit mention of them and because the majority of them are somewhat subtle, it is simple to miss the great majority of these allusions. (Frequently, they only contain one important word or image.) In particular, Joyce concentrates on some of the literary classics like ‘Hamlet’ and the ‘Odyssey’ which are regarded as the best examples of Western literature.

The ‘Odyssey’ serves as a framework for Joyce’s novel, but he doesn’t adhere to it exactly. For instance, while Gerty MacDowell closely resembles the princess Nausicaa, Molly Bloom’s resemblance to Penelope is ironic,^ given that Penelope goes to great lengths to remain faithful to Odysseus for years, whereas Molly casually cheats on her husband. Joyce uses these classics for his objectives to examine how they are relevant to modern life rather than attempting to merely duplicate the tried-and-true formulae that make literary classics successful.

The Unconventional Narrative of Ulysses

Joyce also deliberately defies literary conventions to demonstrate their subjectivity and malleability. He sometimes takes his allusions to the point where they are parodies. For instance, Stephen Dedalus offers a complex interpretation of ‘Hamlet’ that doesn’t make sense and that even Stephen Dedalus doesn’t hold. Joyce undermines the use of canonical texts as sources in Stephen’s theory. He makes fun of both the temptation to try too hard to apply literature to everyday life and the endeavor to understand the original meaning of a piece of art. Most crucially, he makes the argument that literature shouldn’t be bound to any particular norms and standards by using a range of diverse styles and points of view.

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