Ulysses by James Joyce: Bibliotheca Webinar

Each episode in Ulysses is additionally keyed to a specific color from the visible light spectrum, as well as a specific art or science discipline (poetry, history, physics, mathematics), such that the novel encodes multiple symbolic systems running in parallel with the narrative.

“not only are each of the events recounted in his journey and remember the journey motif has been holding western literature together ever since the beginning everybody's going somewhere and each of the sections refers to a body part we're building a man but it also refers to a specific color so the entire color of the visible set of the visible spectrum that gets covered too each of these sections is makes reference to or is connected to a specific color not only are they connected to colors and to body parts but each of them also calls upon specific parts of the arts and sciences like poetry or history or science or physics or math and each of those are keyed in to the events of bloom's uh journey”

Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique abandons grammar, punctuation, and the distinction between description and utterance, creating a 'chemical slurry of consciousness' that has not been 'broken up into the ordinary building blocks of our thinking which is called grammar.'

“the most obvious and for me most difficult part of the style is that uh stream of consciousness there grammar is gone punctuation is gone uh the difference between description and utterance is gone uh what we get is a kind of how can i put it a chemical slurry of consciousness that hasn't been broken up into the ordinary uh building blocks of our thinking which is called grammar all right yeah uh so we still have nouns and verbs and adjectives but now they relate in a not in an indeterminate way because we have a whole paragraph of these things without the the markers which are called punctuation that tell us how these things are supposed to be in a logical relation”

Joyce chose June 16, 1904 as the date of Ulysses specifically because it was an arbitrary, unremarkable day in Dublin with no significant historical events, allowing him to foreground the 'extraordinary within the prosaic' and present 'every man and every day' through the lens of Leopold Bloom.

“he's looking for something that is not conspicuous that doesn't have anything important happen in it because what he's looking for is the extraordinary within the prosaic okay so um he says really uh there was no great headline the next day because not all that much happened in dublin business was conducted lies were told uh people died and people were born but it was no day to remember like uh some before some extraordinary happening so what he's looking for then is every man and every day packed into this particular day”

Chapter 14 (the Oxen of the Sun episode) presents a compressed linguistic history of the entire English language, progressing from Latin expressions through Germanicized pronunciation, early English, Arthurian romance conventions, and parodying roughly a dozen major figures in Western literature (including possibly Swift), allowing readers to witness the 'evolution of language compressed down...paragraph by paragraph.'

“what he does is present a microcosm of the development of the entire english language he begins with some latin expressions and then moves on to uh kind of a germanicized uh pronunciation and then into early english and he starts with i think it's uh the arthur uh romance and with uh the writers associated with arthurian romance and takes it all the way up through uh uh who would be some of uh uh to through many figures including i think uh uh let me think swift might be one of them there's at least half a dozen maybe as many as a dozen different important figures in western literature that get parodied here so what you can see is the evolution of language compressed down so you can watch it happen paragraph by paragraph”

Joyce fragments words into their constituent parts, which goes beyond meaning into the realm of sound and music; he loves the sound of words and structures them musically.

“so the fact that he gets poldy rather than leopold indicates their relationship now i would never have thought to subtract leo from pole but it's the kind of thing that pops into joyce's head because he's often fragmenting words into their constituent parts uh which is beyond the level of meaning it's really strange uh he loves the sound of words and there's a certain sort of music built into this”

Bloom and other characters in Ulysses do not have the easy direct introspective access that Descartes claimed to have; they are unstable characters with unstable grasp of reality both inside and outside, so readers must learn to correct for the mistakes they habitually make and see 'the curvature of their psyches.'

“you think back to descartes descartes thought he had a real easy direct access to his inside feelings he just looking in introspect and he would know that um bloom and the other characters here don't have that easy direct introspection they're often unstable characters with an unstable grasp of reality both inside and outside so we have to learn to correct for the mistakes they habitually make and what that means is that we're seeing some of the curvature of their psyches”

Irish literary culture is uniquely dense and present in everyday life—cab drivers, waiters, and professors all have strong opinions about Joyce—because Ireland grants tax-free status to writers, allowing them to live and work in the country.

“the literary culture in dublin is not like the literary culture i've ever experienced anyplace i've done a fair amount of traveling and um when i got picked up in dublin airport to go to my hotel um my cab driver talked to me about joyce and why you thought he was a very poor writer and i'm thinking well that's unusual i thought that you know i got that one in a million cab driver who had an interest in modernist literature but no um everybody has an opinion about joyce and it doesn't matter whether it's your waiter or a professor of literature everybody has read this stuff um the irish like literature so much that there's no tax on literary writers or their income so they allow writers to live tax-free so long as they write there because they really like literature”

Ulysses is a recapitulation of Homer's three-part epic structure: the Telemachy (Stephen Dedalus searching for father-figure), the Odyssey proper (Bloom's journey through Dublin encounters), and the Nostos (ironic homecoming to Molly), with each episode corresponding to a monster or trial from Homer that Bloom must navigate.

“ulysses is a recapitulation of homer's telemachy that's the first couple of books where telemachus searches for his father that's stephen dallas the next and body of the work the most important and kind of heavily laden part is the odyssey and here we're going to encounter the monsters and the allures and the attractions and the seductions that odysseus did on his way back home”

Joyce was educated by Jesuits, a 'Brahmin education in the Christian world,' which was demanding and sometimes cruel; he subsequently lost his faith in God, which led him to abandon belief in the traditional verities (family, country, nation).

“he's an irish catholic jesuit product which is uh it's like getting a a brahman education uh in the in the christian world they're a special group of very smart very demanding teachers and sometimes their demands were really cruel as we see in the punishment of james joyce while he's at school in the portrait he eventually loses his faith in god loses belief in god which means he loses the belief in catholicism and christianity but it also means that uh the old verities family and country and nation they all go by the wayside too”

Ulysses is classified by some as an ironic hero, by others as an anti-hero, but the character Leopold Bloom has become globally recognized and has had an annual celebration (Bloomsday) named after him, showing the character's cultural resonance despite debates about his heroic status.

“like some of the articles i read i saw you know like they classified him as all sorts of things as an ironic hero as an anti-hero all sorts of different fact you know classifications as to how to how to how to name this protagonist but for the character that a day bloomsday has been recognized globally not necessarily as a federal hot but you know people make it a thing on on bloom's day um and the character name people know from the novel like if you're going to pull out any name from the novel most people will recognize leopold bloom”

Joyce's novel was declared obscene in the United States (1934 obscenity trial) because it discussed sex, masturbation, and bodily functions with unusual frankness compared to 'polite letters' of the era, but courts eventually ruled it was experimental literature rather than pornography despite its explicit content.

“regrettably in 1934 uh 10 or 12 years after it was first published uh there was an obscenity trial in the united states and it was regarded and treated as uh subversive of public morals because it talked about sex masturbation other things that we generally left out of uh a discussion or put what we might call polite letters all right and uh this outraged the sensibilities of the sensor who was still very powerful and i made it all the way until a court had to decide that this was outs outside the realm of obscenity that this was a new complicated experimental literature but it was not pornographic despite the fact that it spoke with uh an unusual uh direction of frankness about things that didn't use that didn't generally get discussed”

Joyce's location descriptions in Ulysses are so architecturally detailed and accurate that the novel could be used to 'rebuild Dublin' from memory, suggesting Joyce's purpose was to preserve Dublin's physical and social geography while simultaneously serving as an ironic commentary on its suffocating insularity.

“one of the things i have i have two more main questions one of them we've kind of touched on but just the detail in this book about dublin is incredible like you know uh joyce you know joyce quoted was quoted at one point saying something along the lines of like if you needed to you could rebuild dublin based on ulysses because there is that much detail”

Joyce's method requires reading with a teacher or in a group of committed readers rather than alone, because 'if your first language is not english because uh native english speakers find joyce very difficult i can hardly imagine what it'd be like to try and figure out what joyce is doing with the english language if it were your second or third language.'

“i would if you're going to be starting at joyce and this is particularly if you're not if your first language is not english because uh native english speakers find joyce very difficult i can't hardly imagine what it'd be like to try and figure out what joyce is doing with the english language if it were your second or third language uh only a few great geniuses like say conrad have that depth of a grasp of other languages so uh it's a very difficult text do it with a teacher that's the best way to do it and if not with a teacher than with a bunch of other people who are like-minded who are also willing to make the commitment”

Homer's epics (Iliad, Odyssey) and Virgil's Aeneid all have 'inelegant endings' that fail to conclude satisfyingly—the Odyssey ends with diplomatic tasks rather than Ulysses' homecoming, the Iliad ends with Achilles' compassion rather than Troy's fall—showing that epic form itself resists clean narrative closure.

“epics don't end the way they should the iliad ends with uh achilles being uh compassionate to preem not with the fall of troy and the odyssey ends not with the killing of the suitors but with odysseus saying now i got to go do a whole bunch of diplomatic things and go see my dad and a whole bunch of other stuff because you've got all these loose ends to tie up um it's a very inelegant ending um even if you look at uh virgil's onion um he also has a problem of an ending”

Leopold Bloom begins his day on one side of Dublin and ends on the other side at his home, but his homecoming is ironic because his wife is unfaithful, not because she was waiting faithfully like Penelope.

“he starts out at home and ends up at home but his homecoming is ironic bloom finally gets home but his wife molly bloom who's the analog of penelope in this case instead of being faithful to him is not she's involved with blazes boiling and he knows it so it's an ironic homecoming and it's an ironic heroism”

Bloom encounters anti-Semitic undertones and hostility during his journey through Dublin, which is part of the novel's unflinching representation of social prejudice and ordinary human cruelty.

“uh he uh bloom gets insulted uh you know there's an anti-semitic undertone uh from there to the maternity hospital”

Molly Bloom is the 'anti-Penelope' because while Homer's Penelope famously delays the suitors through her weaving (loyalty through delay), Molly is 'remarkable for her ingenious not putting off of the suitors'—she accepts Blazes Boylan's advances on the very day Bloom returns home.

“remember penelope is great for her ingenious putting off of the suitors molly is remarkable for her ingenious not putting off of the suitors uh joyce himself is going on a journey but this journey is as much interior as it is exterior”

Each chapter of Ulysses corresponds to a different organ of the human body (e.g., the Sirens chapter corresponds to the ear because we hear sirens with our ears; the Aeolus chapter corresponds to the lungs because Aeolus governs the winds), creating a microcosm-macrocosm structure where each section constructs a new man.

“each of the places or each of the monsters that um that bloom leopold bloom meets um like uh oh aeolius or you know with the winds or uh cyclops and uh you know the other various dangerous ones calypso each of them corresponds to a different organ of the human body so for example the sirens correspond to the ear because that's what we hear the sirens with and uh aeolius corresponds to the lungs because he governs the winds uh cylindress correspond to the brain because they have to negotiate those aristotelian extremes and get through the middle and so what what's being done there is uh joyce is constructing a man this is the microcosm macrocosm aspect of it”

The river in Bloom's journey through Dublin is connected with the idea of time and the flow of time, positioning the river as a symbol of temporal process.

“from the library we go to the river the river is connected with the idea of time and the flow of time”

The novel is 'astonishingly well crafted' with 'every word every image every line...where it's supposed to be' and Joyce was 'beyond fastidious' in his expression, indicating a level of technical control and intentionality across the entire work.

“it is astonishingly well crafted every word every image every line is where it's supposed to be uh joyce was beyond fastidious when it came to uh expressing himself in print”

Portrait of the Artist is a more accessible entry point to Joyce than Ulysses, and Dubliners (especially the short story 'The Dead') should be read before attempting Ulysses, as it provides stylistic preparation.

“unless you're a real uh a real glutton for punishment start with portrait because portrait while it's not an easy read by any means is considerably more direct and more accessible than ulysses then if you find you know you have a taste of joyce try something like dubliners then his short stories which are excellent remarkably deft uh someone once called uh he had a short story or actually kind of short novel perhaps uh in the russian sense uh called the dead which someone once called the best short story ever written because it's deeply moving and poignant”

It is not an accident that so much of English-language literature comes from Irish writers like Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats; there is a distinctive Irish literary tradition.

“it's not an accident that so much of uh literature in the english language comes from irishmen like uh wild or yates in particular”

Ulysses was originally published as a serial release and later as a complete novel (1922), and serial publication shaped the structure, with many subplots deriving from the episodic serial form (similar to Dickens).

“published originally as a serial release starting in 1918 and then into a novel form in 1922 ulysses is a modern parallel to homer's odyssey”

Joyce focuses intensely on subjectivity and interiority, attempting to represent consciousness through language as far as possible, loading meaning and reference into his texts while building upon complex foundations, with ambitions to present all of human experience in a single day.

“joyce writes like few others uh he focuses intensely on subjectivity and interiority and he tries to represent with words as far as you can go with uh the deployment of language so uh he is always loading on meaning and reference and complexity to what started out as very complex books uh his ambitions are enormous and this is in some ways the restatement from modern times with ordinary uh democratic people um what are trials and tribulations and what our spiritual journey amounts to”