ULYSSES
by James Joyce (1922)
Dublin, June 16, 1904. 8.00 am – 3.00 am
Part 1. TELEMACHIA. Methods
Ch 1. TELEMACHUS. Stephen Dedalus comes back home because of
the death of his mother. He decides to leave the Martello Tower far from
“the usurpers” Mulligan and Haines. 8.00 am
Narrative (young), conventional except for some intrusions of the
stream of consciousness.
Ch. 2 NESTOR. Stephen leaves the school where he used to teach history,
literature and algebra after an interview with the headmaster Mr Deasy.
10.00 am
Chatechism (personal). Qs & As. Stephen’s point of view.
Ch 3 PROTEUS. Stephen, modern Hamlet and modern artist,is in front of
the sea in Sandymount strand in Dublin. He sits down to write a poem.
11.00 am
Interior monologue and stream of consciousness.
Part 2 THE ODYSSEY
Ch 4 CALYPSO. Leopold Bloom at home. He talks with the cat, gives
her milk, goes and buy a kidney, brings Molly her breakfast, talks with
her, eats his breakfast, reads a letter from his daughter Milly, goes to toilet,
leaves home for a public bath on the way to Paddy Dignam’s funeral.
8.00 – 8.45 am
Narrative (mature)
Ch 5 THE LOTUS EATERS. Leopold Bloom strolling along Westland
Row, Dublin. He pauses at post office, church, drugstore and bathhouse.
Episode crowded with Dubliners.
10.00 am
Narcissism, a self centered variety of stream of consciousness or
interior monologue
Ch 6 HADES. Funereal cortege to the cemetery. They pass by Stephen on
his way to the beach and Blazes Boylan on his way to Molly. In his
carriage he talks with citizens of Dublin. At the mortuary chapel he thinks
about the burial of the dead.
11.00 am
Incubism, brooding over. A variety of interior monologue
Ch 7 AEOLUS. Bloom is a canvasser for advertisements. He enters the
newspaper for his business. Stephen enters with the letter of his
headmaster. Dubliners in the editorial office talk incessantly.
12.00 am
Enthymemic (a sillogism with part suppressed) is as suitable to
journalism as to the plights of Stephen and Bloom. Development of
journalistic style
Ch 8 LESTRYGONIANS. On his way to the library Bloom has food in
mind. He eats a gorgonzola sandwich at Byrne’s pub and has adventures
on the road.
1.00pm
Peristaltic applies to structure and movement too. Recurrent lines
with change.
Ch 9 SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. In the director’s office of the
National Library, Stephen discusses Shakespeare with a critic and
librarians. Bloom enters passing next to Mulligan and Stephen. The latter
exposes his theory on Hamlet, father and son relationship.
2.00 pm
Literary criticism
Ch 10 THE WANDERING ROCKS. Dublin is the character of this
chapter. It’s the pause in the action. Procession of Father Conmee
(Church) and cavalcade of the viceroy (state).
3.00 pm
Labyrinthine, Dublin more than scenery is microcosmic, our world in
little.
Ch 11 THE SIRENS. On his way to a meeting, Bloom stops for another
lunch. He eats liver. In the adjoining bar, the barmaids flirt with Dubliners.
Boylan is ready for his meeting with Molly. Men sing in the pub, Bloom
eats , answers Martha’s letter and thinks about Molly and her lover.
4.00 pm
Fugal. Music and ear determine structure.
Ch 12. THE CYCLOPS. At Barney Kirman’s bar Bloom, waiting for
Martin Cunningham, joins the conversation of a nationalist. Out of place
he fails to offer a drink. The violent nationalist hits Bloom the jew.
5.00 pm
Gigantism. Nameless narrator, a typical Dubliner
Ch 13. NAUSICAA. Having visited the widow Mrs Dignam, Bloom
retreats to the beach at Sandymount. On the beach Gerty MacDowell and
her two girlfriends are playing with a ball. She looks at Bloom and he at
her.
9.00 pm
For Bloom’ s part interior monologue, for Gerty’s the style of a cheap
Victorian novelette.
Ch 14 OXEN OF THE SUN. At the maternity hospital Bloom encounters
Stephen and some medical students drinking and joking downstairs while
upstairs Mrs Purefoy is in labor. They mock childbirth, only Bloom is
humane, reverent and compassionate. He’s always an outsider. After the
birth they go in the pub. Bloom tags along drunken Stephen.
11 pm
Embryonic development. Literary parodies on English literature.
Ch 15 CIRCE. Drunken Stephen leads Bloom in Bella Cohen’s brothel.
Bloom takes responsibility over Stephen. In the street Stephen is attacked
by two drunken soldiers that knock him down. Bloom helps him
12.00 pm
Hallucination
Part 3 ITHACA
Ch 16. EUMAEUS. At Skin the goat’s shelter Bloom offers coffee and
bun to Stephen that gradually recovers. Friendly Bloom invites him home
They walk arm in arm.
1.00am
Narrative(old) illustrates fatigue
Ch 17 ITHACA. A parallel course takes both to 7, Eccles Street. They
have cocoa in the kitchen. Bloom invites Stephen to stay but he declines
with gratitude. Stephen goes off and Bloom goes in the parlour and then to
bed where Molly asks him about his day.
2.30 am
Scientific, inhuman and objective. All is reduced to abstraction, qs &
as.
Ch 18 PENELOPE. Molly’s monologue on life. It begins with the female
word yes. According to Joyce the four cardinal points are the female
breast, arse, womb and cunt. The final yes, yes, yes is a yes to life, to your
own destiny.
3.00 am
Monologue, stream of consciousness
OPERE MONDO by Franco Moretti (pp.115-170)
The stream of consciousness is the best way to face the best a town can offer you, the best but also
the most dangerous; too many stimula, and too differnt and too intense. It gives shape to metropolis
and a reason for its inhabitants. These stimula are threatening but attractive too, a shopwindow in a
big department store is the whole world at a glance, it is seductive and so is advertisement. It
protecs goods from the consumer and at the same time it makes them suitable for every person. The
stream is like ads and Leopold is the true metropolitan hero.
Our world is a dual world based on standard products but unique. Goods have words, a price, labels
and modern urban landscapes are full of words, towns of words. In this context to find your own
way you need a weak grammar, a cubism of languages = that is the stream of consciousness, short
sentences, segments, the disappearance of the I and the invasion of things, objects. Ads are the
sender, the stream is the receiver. Ads is a flirt with goods to solve the paradox of modern world:
goods for every one but the impossibility to have all of them.
In the streets of Dublin Leopold sees but doesn’t see, a quick sight and go, he inreases distraction
not consciousness, a positive behaviour to survive in a metropolis full of simultaneous stimula. The
paratactic structure is open, it gives many possibilities. Modern man is inattentive in order to
socialize, he is receptive , passive like a radio listener, like the stream.
Monument vs affiche
Stone
vs paper
Duty
vs superficiality, possibility.
Possibility in literature is multiplicity, a number of possible solutions. So paratactic structure means
independent, self concluded sentences on an horizontal approach. It sounds senseless but it helps to
live in metropolis where you need to be more intelligent and stupid too. The stream is the language
of big towns.
With it the world is smaller, Bloom’s common places make the unknown more familiar
furthermore, they are the scaffolds of Bloom’s casual associations. On that famous day 14 June
1904 Bloom doesn’t do anyting special, he walks, remembers, looks around, dreams, thinks. He
simply sets up his receptive skill, his imaginary. What speaks in his stream is the pre-conscious, the
place of possibilities