Joyce, James - Ulysses (5)

Ulysses

The ‘Ulysses’ is a modernist novel written by Irish writer James Joyce.

-Plot-

The whole novel takes place on a single day, Thursday, June 16, 1904, which was a special day for the writer.
During the course of this day, three main characters wake up, have various encounters (meetings) in Dublin, and go to sleep eighteen hours later.
The central character is Leopold Bloom, who leaves his home at eight o’clock to buy his breakfast, then he walks in many streets, attends a funeral and endures (experiences) some misadventures and delight.
Finally there’s Bloom’s wife, Molly, who’s planning an afternoon of adultery with her music director.

-The Setting-

The ‘Ulysses’ is set in Dublin and the story shows a detailed account (version, story) of ordinary life on an ordinary Dublin day.

-The Mythical Method-

Joyce’s Ulysses is a new form of prose base on ‘the mythical method’, resulting from the progress made by psychology, ethnology and anthropology.

-A Revolutionary Prose-

Joyce combined several methods in the Ulysses, such as: the stream of consciousness, the cinematic technique with the literary equivalents of close-ups, flashbacks, tracking shots, suspension of speech, question and answer, dramatic dialogue and the juxtapositions of events.
Those things enabled the writer to render his characters’ inner life creating the ‘collage technique’, quite similar to the techniques used by the cubist artists who depicted a scene from all perspectives.
In Ulysses Joyce uses two levels of narration, one external to the character’s mind and the other one is internal.