Joyce's towering masterpiece is a modern interpretation of Homer's Odyssey. The book was written over a number of years, then censored due to its sexual content, and was finally made legally available in 1933.
The story is set in Dublin and takes place over the course of one working day, though it represents Ulysses' protracted journey home over many years. The main characters are Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising salesman as Ulysses; his wife Molly as Penelope; and Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is Telemachus. The adventures include a funeral and several episodes of adultery. Each parallels an event from Homer's Odyssey.
The narrative of Ulysses uses a range of literary styles, including stream-of-consciousness, pun and parody and an extremely rich and varied vocabulary. The book is extremely long and contains eighteen chapters. I found it not to be the easiest read, but it certainly rewards the effort. Some scholars regard it as a masterpiece of Modernism, while others as the pivotal point of Postmodernism.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 8