Universitatea Bucureti

Facultatea de Limbi i Literaturi Strine

Lucrare de licen

The Narratological Study of James Joyces

Ulysses
Zaharia Laura Ana

Profesor coordonator:
Prof. Dr. Bogdan tefnescu

Bucureti, februarie 2015

Contents

Introduction.5
Part I: Theoretical Concepts
Chapter 1 Narratology. General Notions7
Chapter 2 Roland Barthes, Introduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narratives...10

Part II: Narratology Applied to Ulysses

Chapter 1 The Functional Layer. Nuclei..16
Chapter 2 The Functional Layer. Leitmotifs21
Chapter 3 - The Action Layer..25
Chapter 4 The Narration Level. Discourse...29
Chapter 5 The Narration Layer. Narrator and time..34

Part III: Modernism and Joyces Singularity 42

Bibliography...49
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INTRODUCTION

It has been said about James Joyces Ulysses that it is a landmark in twentieth century
literature and a watershed in the history of the novel (Fargnoli 159), but apart from its
importance as a modernist writing and its impact on literature in general, for the readership it is
known as a notoriously intimidating book (Attrige 122). The present study proposes an analysis
of James Joyces novel from a narratological perspective, in an attempt to uncover some of this
literary works secrets and hidden structural devices.
I have chosen Roland Barthes study on layers of meaning as a theoretical basis for this
analysis as it covers all the main aspects of the work, from story to characters, narrator, space,
time and even discourse. Leaving any of these elements out would provide us with an incomplete
image of a work which is, indeed, an elaborate exercise of creativity, and I believe the
complexity of each and every one of the aforementioned levels should be noticed. In his
Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, Barthes explains how each of the three
structural layers (functions, action and narrative) is constructed, and what one should look for in
a story in order to understand its configuration. This is especially useful in the case of Ulysses
which, as we shall see in the body of this thesis, is a combination of techniques and experiments
with old and new ideas. For example, the infrastructure of the novel or the functions layer, as
Barthes calls it is borrowed from Homers Odyssey, whereas the characters the actions layer
are specific to the modernist movement which had as its main purpose displaying life in its true
form. Common, simple characters which live through their routines without any unexpected
event taking place are the trait of many works written at the time.
Ulysses has been analyzed before from a narratological perspective. Its structure is
singular, famously uncommon and there are many narratological aspects of the novel which

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caught the interest of critics worldwide. However, a comprehensive study which applies Barthes
theory of the layers in a narrative has yet to be published.
In my opinion, rather than looking at particular aspects as most critics do focus in Ulysses,
language, characters taken separately applying Bathes theory would provide a wholistic view
of the structure of the novel. Moreover, Barthes theory is not restrictive, in the sense that it can
be applied to a wide range of stories, it is flexible enough to be moulded into the shape of many
different narratives. Basing my analysis on Barthes theory provided me with the tools to follow
a structure which is common to most stories and which is also present in Ulysses while at the
same time offering me the possibility to curb the theory of layers in a narrative so as to suit the
novels particularities.
This study based on Barthes approach on narratology takes previous criticism further by not
only looking at all the main structural aspects of the novel in one extensive analysis but also
connecting them within the limits of an established theoretical basis. This, I believe, provides the
reader with a comprising image which is essential when trying to understand Ulysses as well as
any other story.
In order to understand the structure of the novel as it was perceived by Joyce himself, the
connection with Homers work and to dive into the chapters at large, I will be examining Stuart
Gilberts James Joyces Ulysses. A Study. In his book, Gilbert provides his personal summary of
the action, characters and technique used in every chapter, along with a table containing the
scene, hour, organ, art, color, symbol and technic 1 assigned by Joyce to each of the eighteen
chapters of the work. This work will also constitute the basis for a comprehensive analysis of the
leitmotifs or catalysers, as they shall be called further down in the present study , one of the
most important aspect of the functional layer. Catalysers are meant to highlight numerous
religious and philosophical concepts (the omphalos, paternity, the origin of life) but they are, in
fact, what gives Ulysses its background of Irish and Eastern identity, a mix of mesmerizingly
local and fascinatingly foreign atmosphere.
The actions layer I shall approach with the help of The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce,
especially from Jennifer Levines perspective in her essay Ulysses. Characters in narratology are
not looked at as psychologically complex personages, but rather as actants, or tools used to
1 Term used by Gilbert throughout his book
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move the plot further towards the denouement. Ulysses is, in this sense, exemplary, as its
characters are left to move along their natural paths, and instead of forcing them into unexpected
storyline twists, Joyce chooses to shift the focus from them to the language of the novel. This
leads us to discourse, a subject dissected by Laurent Milesi in his work James Joyce and the
Difference of Language, and the last level in Barthess schema, the narration layer.
Discourse in James Joyces Ulysses could, by itself, make the subject of another, much
more extensive paper. However, in the context of narratology, deciphering the countless shifts in
technique and their impact on the structure of the novel is of main interest. Although language is,
in itself, art and Joyce did certainly use it as such it is also a tool which betrays deeper layers
within the structure of a story. In his novel, Joyce undertakes the task of delivering language in
its most natural form, using stream-of-conscious technique (one of many which will be discussed
further in the thesis) and employing it with such dexterity that readers see, hear, smell, taste and
feel the story through the characters senses.
The purpose of this in-depth narratological analysis of James Joyces Ulysses is to
explain why this novel is, as previously stated, a landmark in twentieth century literature
(Fargnoli 159), and to demonstrate that, more than the experimental language employed, the
structure is, in fact, what makes it stand out as an innovative piece of literature. The last part of
this thesis is dedicated to comparing the work with other novels of the time. In her book
Theorists of the Modernist Novel. James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, Deborah
Parsons puts the three writers in the same category by referring mainly to their use of stream-ofconsciousness as a main technique. I will be basing the third part of my study on Parsons
research in an attempt to demonstrate the singularity of Ulysses structure. Adopting the
narratological approach implies that the analysis must remain within the limits of the novel
narratology searches for meaning inside the story and does not require any connection with the
storys external circumstances. However, in this present thesis I propose to take the study further
and not only analyze the novel and how it defies Barthes theory of the layers in a narrative, but
also demonstrate that Joyces methods are specific to him and cannot be found in any other
modernist work.

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PART I: THEORETICAL CONCEPTS

Chapter 1 Narratology. General Notions.

Recognized as one of the greatest theorists to have reshaped modern literary criticism,
Barthes defines the term narrative as follows: Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious
variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances as though any material
were fit to receive mans stories (79). In plainer terms, a narrative is the representation in art of
an event or story, written or told2 .
Narratology as its name suggests is a critical approach to the study of narratives, based on the
presumption that all written, spoken or otherwise delivered stories have a shared underlying
structure, or are connected through a set of common structure-related rules. Caring nothing for
the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical,
transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself. (Barthes 79). In Mieke Bals words, this set of
generalized statements about a particular segment of reality (3) aims to outline the universal
pattern on which particular written or oral works are constructed, so that by looking at just a
number of such narratives one will be able to easily predict the internal structure of all other
works, past and future. Narratology is text-oriented, in other words the production, publication,
distribution and reception of the story, although not altogether inexistent, are not the focus of
study.
Looking at a literary work from the inside to its final layers, from its foundation to its
final form provides insight on information tightly weaved into the story rather than apparent
through discourse3. While this type of information might be hard to comprehend at a first
encounter with the work, this model of approach makes the reading of any work, easier, and the
2 Merriam-Webster online dictionary entry for narrative
3 For information on story and discourse see page 2 paragraph 3
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comparison between works pertaining to different genres, facile. How is novel to be set against
novella, tale against myth, drama against tragedy (as has been done a thousand times) without
reference to a common model?(80) is the question Barthes seeks to answer through the use of
narratology.
This critical pursuit would, in theory, make the understanding and analysis of literary texts much
more accessible to the general public as well as to specialists in the domain, however, as we are
about to find out, a universal model has not yet been put forth - rather there are numerous such
patterns, each with its own author and terminology, often inventing different terms to define the
same phenomenon, which can make the approach confusing. Thus analyzing a piece of literature
or another type of story from a narratological point of view must start with choosing the
approach that is best suited for the work at hand.
In her book, An Introduction to Narratology Monika Fludernik talks about the main types
of narrative theory: the first and most widely accepted model, she says, draws upon linguistics as
its source. This branch of narratology, Flundernik explains, is considered to be rigid, less open to
interpretation which comes as no surprise considering its almost mathematical roots and the
structure governed by binary oppositions (story vs. discourse, narrator vs. narratee etc) which it
inherited. Before tackling the theoretical articles which will provide the basis of the analysis of
James Joyces novel and the specific terminology that comes with it there are a few essential
terms used broadly in the study of narratives which we must define.
The first distinction which needs to be made is between story and discourse. As
defined by Tzvetan Todorov, who in turn resorts to the distinction first made by Russian
Formalists, story is the action in a narrative, or the narrative thread, what happens in the
narrative and the characters that make it happen. Discourse, on the other hand, he describes as
comprising the tenses, aspects and modes of the narrative (Barthes 86), in other words the
dispositio and elocutio the stylistic elements employed in the narrative if story is the seed,
then discourse is the shell wrapped around it. Of main influence in the development of

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linguistics-inspired narratology is the synchronic (as opposed to diachronic) 4 approach proposed

by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. His theory of the signifier and the signified 5 is also
transposed into narratological terminology as story and discourse, part of the narrative langue.
This theory can be further developed into a narrative being formed between the tight, strict code
of language and the even stricter narrative code If one attempts to embrace the whole of a
written narrative, one finds that is starts from the most highly coded (the phonematic, or even the
merismatic level), gradually relaxes until it reaches the sentence, and then begins to tighten up
again, moving progressively from small groups of sentences (micro-sequences) which are still
very free, until it comes to the main actions, which form a strong and restricted code (Bal 123).
If we were to apply this theory to James Joyces work the first aspect we would notice would be
the apparently chaotic discourse, the sentences which do not abide by the rules of grammar or
syntax. However, at a closer look the perfectly organized structure of the main actions what
Barthes calls the functional level as we will see later on becomes visible. In other words, what
Joyce did was to find a loophole in the very tight narrative code which allowed him to
experiment with writing while still keeping his work understandable.
Compared to other narratologists, Roland Barthes approach is not bound by either structuralist
or morphological theory, although it does draw on linguistic concepts one of its sources.
However, what is universally regarded as particular in his work is the fact that Barthes project
as a theorist was to unsettle every idea which took on the appearance of being natural or
commonsensical or indisputable (Graham 4), in other words although he found inspiration in
earlier works, his concepts are still unique and innovative.

4 Synchrony and diachrony are two different and complementary viewpoints

in linguistic analysis. As defined in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, synchrony is a
state in which things happen, move or exist at the same time while diachrony is a change
extended through time. In other words, a diachronic analysis implies historical change
suffered by the object while synchronism refers to analysis made at a certain point in time.

5 Language can be compared with a sheet of paper: thought is the front and the sound
the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; likewise in
language, one can neither divide sounds from thought nor thought from sound states
Saussure in Course in General Linguistics. He is the one who gives thought in case of
language the name of signified and sound the name of signifier (page 113)

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Chapter 2 Roland Barthes, Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives

In his study Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, Roland Barthes

proposes a structure based on layers of meaning, also called layers of description. There are, he
states, three such layers in every narrative: the functions layer, the actions layer and the
narration layer. To understand a narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of the story, it
is also to recognize its construction in storeys, to project the horizontal concatenation of the
narrative thread on to an implicitly vertical axis; to read (and listen to) a narrative is not merely
to move from one word to the next, it is also to move from one level to the next. (Barthes 87)
This being said, before diving into the analysis of each layer separately, let us take a look at how
they work together to form the narrative pattern.
The elements of the three layers are called units and are interconnected through two
different types of relations. The concept belongs to Emile Benveniste, French structural linguist
who defines them as follows: the first type, namely distributional relations are horizontal, in the
sense that they connect units within the layer. The continuous logical flow of a sequence in a
story is maintained by such horizontally connected units. For example, a man handing his wife a
letter after cooking her breakfast is a simple example of such unity, where each previous action
determines the next and a first meaning is apparent by looking at the sequence as a whole. The
second type integrational relation is vertical, connecting units across layers.
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When looked at from single perspective of either only distributional or integrational

relations, a unit may sometimes seem to be devoid of significance. It acquires full meaning only
when both perspectives are employed in the analysis. Roland Barthes even goes as far as stating
that no level on its own can produce meaning. A unit belonging to a particular level only takes
on meaning if it can be integrated in a higher level. (86). Going back to our earlier example, the
letter which appears to be of no special importance when looked at from the point of view of its
immediate context may become the triggering element of a series of main events which occur
throughout the story, and may prove to be an essential element in determining several characters
personality if, for example, the letter is a memento of the wifes adulterous behavior.
The first layer Barthes approaches in his theory is the functional layer. As its name
suggests, this layer is made up of functions, units which connect via distributional relations, and
indices, subject to integrational relations. Functions are, basically, the units which drive the story
further, they make up the plot. For example a string of actions - or going back to our earlier
example, the making of the breakfast or finding of the letter, handing and reading it and so
on ,and every other action that unites these phases, regardless of how small or insignificant it
might seem - is considered a function. While functions refer strictly to actions, indices give
information about the setting, atmosphere, character psychology etc.

In Barthes words,

Functions involve metonymic relata, indices metaphoric relata; the former correspond to a
functionality of doing, the latter to a functionality of being (93).
To deepen our understanding of this scheme, we must further distinguish between two
types of functions: cardinal functions, also called nuclei, are the main nodes in a narrative,
whereas catalysers are small actions which drive the plot from one nuclei to the other. These
catalysers are still functional, insofar as they enter into correlation with a nucleus, but their
functionality is attenuated, unilateral, parasitic (94) claims Barthes, but this assertion might not
be universally valid as we are to see in the particular case of James Joyces Ulysses, catalysers
have the unique role of triggering a certain stream of thoughts for each of the main characters in
the story. This is of crucial importance as the stream of consciousness technique is utilized at full
length of the novel, insofar as it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between action taking place
at speech time and action envisaged solely in the characters consciousness.

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Functions are not the only units which can be further broken apart into classes - the
indices, too, can be assigned to the categories of indices proper on the one hand, and informants
on the other hand. Indices proper are there to offer information about the characters, atmosphere
and are relevant not only at the time when they appear in the narration, but all throughout it; in
other words, they always have implicit signifieds. Informants, on the other hand, are pure data
with immediate signification (96), like the date or the name of the place where the action is
taking place at a certain moment in the narration. Even though it might seem like cardinal or
nuclei functions are the central unit of every narrative since they are the main nodes making up
the narrative thread - Barthes emphasizes on the fact that, in a narration, every single element is
there with a purpose: A nucleus cannot be deleted without altering the story, but neither can a
catalyst without altering the discourse (95).
A logical succession of nuclei bound together by a relation of solidarity is called a
sequence in a narration. Sequences are always namable, just like in linguistics (ex. Drinking
beer is a sequence made up of a multitude of actions which can be perceived under a single
name). Sequences move in counterpoint, i.e. one sequence does not end when another one starts
by cutting in; it will continue over the interruption until it reaches its own ending. In some cases
sequences appear to not communicate. In this case, they create what is called in the literature an
epic pattern, in other terms a narrative broken at the functional level but unitary at the actantial
level. James Joyces novel displays broad usage of the counterpoint technique and an infinitely
complex epic pattern as it recreates the interminable flow of human thoughts, which neither start
nor end according to the rules of everyday exteriorized communication.
The second layer Barthes talks about is the actions layer. While characters themselves are
part of the narration level, their actions or their quality of being actants are what makes up
the actions layer. To paraphrase Aristotle, <there may be actions without characters but not
characters without an action>. Structural analysis stands against treating a character as a copy of
certain human typologies - like the psychoanalytic approach, for example, often does. Instead,
they are treated in terms of their role in the development of the plot their function as donors,
helpers and so on, their relationships with other characters, their number. The ideas of their
categorizations appear in the literature as follows: Claude Bremond believes that every character
offers a personal perspective on the sequence it governs, and governs every sequence within
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which it performs actions, in short, every character (even secondary) is the hero of his own
sequence (Barthes 106). Todorov proposes a type of analysis based on three basic relations
which can occur between characters love, communication and help - whereas Greimas sees
characters as performers moving along three semantic axes communication, desire and ordeal,
making the characters paradigms which move the axes along, i.e. subject/object, donor/receiver,
helper/opponent (a theory which can be observed in Propps myth criticism). The class of actants
in itself is subject to rules of multiplication, substitution and replacement. Thus characters
experienced from the point of view of structural narratology form as they perform actions, grow
in close connection with the functional layer, becoming more complex as the story unravels.
However, Barthes emphasizes on the duality of this class, in the sense that although part of their
nature namely, their quality of being actants or performers constitutes the actions layer,
their other comprising elements, those which connect fictional personae to our own, the readers,
reality, can only correspond to the narration layer. It will perhaps be the grammatical
categories of the person (accessible in our pronouns) which will provide the key to the actional
level; but since these categories can only be defined in relation to the instance of discourse, not
to that of reality, character, as units of the actional level, find their meaning (their intelligibility)
only if integrated in the third level of description, here called the level of Narration (as opposed
to Functions and Actions). (Barthes 109)
The narration layer is defined by the concept of communication: the purpose of any
narrative is transmitting a certain message. In linguistic communication, je is the donor of the
narrative, and tu the receiver. Although je is an obligatory presence and apparent throughout
the narration, tu is felt through the conative function of communication - a concept first
introduced by structuralist linguist Roman Jakobson which refers to engaging the receiver
directly in the process of communication. In other words the information je already knows yet
still provides is proof that tu exists.
Regarding the narrator who is also part of this narration layer Barthes asserts that
who speaks (in the narrative) is not who writes (in real life) and who writes is not who is (112).
He dismisses the ideas proposed by critics before him who suggest there are many categories of
narrators depending on the amount of information they hold or the role they play within the story
- omniscient narrator, the character-narrator etc. Instead, he suggests, regardless of the person of
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the narration (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) there are only two types of narrators personal and apersonal.
Evidently, the use of the 1st person in a narration is a clear sign of a personal narrator, whereas
the 2nd person discourse pertains to an apersonal narrator. However, in case of a 3 rd person, if the
3rd person can be changed to 1st person without altering the discourse, it may also be regarded as
personal.6 These two types of narrators are not exclusive for a story, they are permanently
interchanged to the point where they can even alternate within the same sentence. It is therefore
mandatory for any study of narratives to contain a study of the language employed, or what
Barthes calls the system of a narrative, in order to fully perceive these changes which affect
every work from the outmost layers and all the way to its central structure.
The three layers are therefore not the only common structure which Barthes discovers in his
analysis. In the case of a chapter which treats the subject of the system of a narrative, the theorist
inspects langue or the language of a narrative, stating Languagecan be defined by the
concurrence of two fundamental processes: articulation, or segmentation, which produces units
(this being what Benveniste calls form), and integration, which gathers these units into units of a
higher rank (this being meaning) (Barthes 117). It is a concept which finds its roots in structural
linguistics, but which Barthes and other narratologists successfully apply in their studies of
stories.
The processes which regulate the development of language within a narrative are
distortion and expansion, both of them encouraging changes at the level of time and space in a
narrative thusly: The form of narrative is essentially characterized by two powers: that of
distending its signs over the length of the story (distortion) and that of inserting unforeseeable
expansions into these distortions (Barthes 117). The theory finds its origins in a linguistic
concept called dystaxia, where linguistic elements are introduced within a compact
grammatical structure, hence disturbing its linearity a phenomenon which one can easily
observe in the functional layer of a narrative, in the case of counterpoint technique which has
been explained earlier in the work. Each sign in a narrative may become a symbolic node
(Barthes 118), in other words it forms a web-like structure whose nucleus it becomes, connecting

6 Barthes puts forth this theory in his essay, Structural Analysis of Narratives, page
109, calling the personal narrator jeltu and the apersonal narrator il
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several signifieds both horizontally or distributionally and vertically or integrationally, across

layers.
Distortion and expansion help control time and space in a narrative: writers use them to
move the plot along faster or stall it according to their will.

One of the most obvious and

widely-used methods which employs this form of dystaxia is suspense, which Barthes
characterizes as a complex framework starting from a main sequence which remains open
throughout a series of numerous other sequences which in turn disturb its linearity. Suspense is a
convention used to capture the attention of a reader and keep him or her in expectation for the
outcome of the main sequence, constructing a narrative time which would not be possible in our
own human reality. In other words, distortion and expansion are the processes that make a story
fascinating they keep in place the rigid narrative structure which builds a bridge to a reality
which the reader can easily connect to, while at the same time inserting endless distractions
which form logical micro-universes but which would not find their place in real time. In the
words of French poet Paul Valery, Formally the novel is close to the dream; both can be defined
by consideration of this curious property: all their deviations form part of them (Barthes 117).
This is a property which James Joyce extensively exploited in his novel Ulysses, and even more
so in his last literary work, Finnegans Wake.
Edgar Allen Poe writes It will be found in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful,
and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic. This is also true in the case of James
Joyces novel : at first sight, it looks like Ulysses broke all structural barriers in narratology and
this is what makes it stand out from all the other modernist novels, when in fact the opposite is
true. If the structural code had been disturbed, then the novel itself would make no sense to the
reader; instead, James Joyce planned his work in full detail before starting to write it. His nuclei,
catalysers, indices are all very carefully placed so that the story in itself is well glued together,
captivating and easy to follow. His extremely analytic approach to writing is what allowed him
the freedom to play with language and style to the extreme, and what makes his work
fascinating, otherworldly and at the same time perfectly human.
In the next few chapters of this thesis I will apply Barthes theory of layers in a narrative
to James Joyces Ulysses. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that although the novel
shocks at first sight because of its complex language and hallucinating changes in technique and
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narrative focus, a narratological study of the work can make it more approachable. Symbolism
which may be hard to comprehend without a solid understanding of the structure of the novel
will become apparent and thus easier to grasp. Moreover, a detailed analysis from a
narratological perspective will demonstrate Joyces analytical creativity and will show why
Ulysses truly stands out from other literary works of the time.

PART II NARRATOLOGY APPLIED TO ULYSSES

Chapter 1 The Functional Layer. Nuclei.

Joyces contemporaries were struck with the unruly nature of his works, quite apart from
their strident indecency and irreverence states Fritz Senn (Milesi 28). Although the work was
famously taken out of the printer and off the bookstore and library shelves for its obscene
language as it was considered at the time, the reason for which it baffles the reader now as it did
then is, beyond doubt, the disregard for traditional writing rules and thus the abstruse novelty in
terms of structure.
We have stated before that the reading of Ulysses, as indeed of any other of Joyces
works, is not to be done only chronologically, or in a straight line from the first and until the last
page. In Barthes words, in any narrative the networks are many and interact, without any one of
them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds;
it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can
be authoritatively declared to be the main one7. In other words if we are to fully understand any
story we have to find its structure, and start the analysis from the logical core outwards, changing
the order in which we read the chapters of the work at hand.
7 http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/modules/barthesplot.html
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This is true for Ulysses perhaps even more than for any other novel of its time and many since.
As Derek Attridge insightfully asserts in his Companion to James Joyce,

In Ulysses, sequence is less important than a synchronic and spatial mapping based on
repetition: allusions, echoes, symbols, and archetypal patterns all being, essentially, modes of
repetition that forestall the onward moving logic of narrative. But then, reading Ulysses is often a
case of moving backward through the pages (to check a detail, note an echo, revise an
interpretation) as much as forward. (131)

This being said, we must mention that we are not without help in our task an in-depth
understanding of the novel becomes a lot more easier when we take a look at the work through
the prism of a model James Joyce himself provided and which is further broken apart in over 400
pages in Stuart Gilberts James Joyces Ulysses. A Study. However comprehensive this study
might be we must not deem this model to be the only possible one, nor completely true and
flawless as a matter of fact, Joyce provided his friends with more than one such models, one
example being the one given to Carlo Linati, who shares quite a different outline of the story. For
our purposes of approaching the study of Joyces novel trough Roland Barthes narratological
theory I believe Stuart Gilberts model is the better choice as it is the more detailed and complex
of the two. However, as we will see later in the thesis, there do exist certain elements in Linatis
scheme which are not present in Gilberts and which we have the obligation to include in our
analysis.
The first structure-related aspect any reader of Ulysses notices is its being divided into
eighteen chapters. In the published version of the book all chapters are numbered instead of
having a specific title, however in the models Joyce handed over to his friends each chapter bears
the name of its equivalent in Homers Odyssey. The allusions to Homers work are not to be
dismissed this is also the authors wish, transparent if we are to consider the title of his novel,
which coincides with the name of the Odysseys protagonist. Thus the first episode is known as
Telemachus, the second is Nestor, the third Proteus, the fourth Calypso, Lotus Eaters,
Hades, Aeolus, Lestrygonians, Scylla and Charybdis, Wandering Rocks, Sirens,
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Cyclops, Nausicaa, Oxen of the Sun, Circe, Eumaeus, Ithaca, and Penelope. Further,
by common consent of the readers, the chapters are split into three sections section 1
comprising of the first three episodes, having Stephen Dedalus as narrator and main character is
known as the Telemachiad. Section 3, made up of the last three chapters and coinciding with
the return home of the heroes, is known as Nostos. The largest part of the novel the twelve
middle episodes, to be more exact constitute the Odyssey proper (Attrige 123), the journey of
the main characters along the streets of Dublin on one June 16th, 1904.
As a first step in the structural analysis of Ulysses we must expand on the connection
between Ulysses and Homers Odyssey. How is a connection between Homers and Joyces work
relevant to the subject of narratology in Ulysses, one might be tempted to ask. The answer is
simple: unlike James Joyces novel, the structure of the Odyssey is very clear and easy to follow
for any reader. It therefore gives us a better view of what the inner structure of Ulysses is, a view
we might miss if we are to found our analysis solely on the novel. If we know even the bare
bones of the Odyssean plot, Jennifer Levine states, the texture of Ulysses thickensThe more
detailed our knowledge of Homers epic, the stronger the echoes with Ulysses. The more precise,
too, our sense of difference (123)
Let us, therefore, stop and analyze the date on which the action takes place. In the
introduction to the Wordsworth edition, Cedric Watts assesses that the 16 th of June might be the
day when James Joyce first met his wife; however, other studies of the work such as Jennifer
Levines and Stuart Gilberts do not mention a concrete reason for Joyces choosing this
particular date. Regardless of why the author chose to set the action of the novel on June 16,
whether the date has a special significance for him or not, one aspect remains unchanged for
our three main characters this is just a day like any other, without any unexpected turn of events,
a perfectly ordinary day, in fact (Gilbert 3). This is especially curious if we associate the date
with the title of the novel and with Homers Odyssey.
The title of the novel and the actual plot are in antithesis. Ulysses, the protagonist of
Homers Odyssey, travels a long way from home in a fantastic journey full of perils and trials; on
the other hand, none of the protagonists in Ulysses face anything of the sort. Jennifer Levine
rightfully calls the title a provocation (122), a provocation of seeing the novel as a quest right
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from the start, as a journey instead of just an ordinary day in Dublin in other words of starting
the lecture of the novel with a preconceived idea. She also remarks Imagine for a moment that
this seven-hundred-page novel is called Hamlet and you will regain a sense of it as a text brought
into deliberate collision with a powerful predecessor. (122). And deliberate is the perfect word
to describe the authors intentions, for it would be foolish of the reader to assume James Joyce
leaves anything uncalculated or in the hands of fate or coincidence.
The association with Homers work does not end here. In the schema provided to Carlo
Linati, James Joyce offers a section dedicated to the characters present in every chapter of the
book. All of these characters bear the name of their counterparts in the Odyssey, and it is
transparent that their presence in the book is to be looked at from the perspective of Homers
work. What is more, the persons who appear in each chapter correspond to their analogue in the
correspondent chapter in the Odyssey, even though their personality might be incompatible
this, too, is a provocation intended to encourage the reader to look at Ulysses from more than one
angle. About the influence Homer had upon James Joyces choice of characters and, further on,
language, we will expand on more in the next chapters of this paper.

Going back to the structure of the novel as presented in Stuart Gilberts study, alongside
the names of the chapters, the author provides us with a list of elements specific to each of the
chapters. These elements are, in the following order: scene or place where the action is set;
hour, organ, art, color, symbol and technic. What has first stricken every reader as unusual is the
fact that each of the thirteen chapters displays a unique set of features indeed, Joyce planned
each of these chapters so that none of the aforementioned aspects would repeat itself. If we are
to refer to Roland Barthess scheme of the layers in a narrative and start with the functional layer,
we can easily notice that all the informants are presented in this part of the study, namely under
scene and hour, the place and time where each part of the plot takes place are conveniently
laid out for the readers benefit. The stylistic approach for each chapter is also unique and the
author invested much effort into making each discourse technique stand out while supporting the
unraveling plot.
However, the same functional layer is not as easy to outline when referring to the nuclei
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and catalysers present in the novel. The nuclei especially are easy to lose sight of in a continuum
of thoughts which flow rapidly and apparently without a set hierarchy the stream of
consciousness technique does have the effect of making all actions equal, as mentioned before.
On this topic, the esteemed French critic Auguste Bailly states: in the silent monologue, as
transposed into words by Joyce, each element seems of equal importance, the subsidiary and the
essential themes are treated as equivalent and an equal illumination falls upon those parts which
were, in reality, brightly lit up (Gilbert 15) Yet, opposed to how they might seem at first, the
thoughts of the characters are no more incoherent or ill-balanced than the fragments of a
picture-puzzle which, fitted together, compose a life-like portrait, and no more irrelevant as to
detail than the universe itself(16), Stuart Gilbert asserts. He offers a quick sketch of the nuclei in
Ulysses:

In the morning a citizen was buried; a little before midnight a child was born. At about the same
hour the weather broke and there was a sudden downpour, accompanied by a violent clap of
thunder. In the intervals of imbibing Guinness, Power or J .J. & S. the Dub liners discoursed
with animation on their pet topic, Irish politics, happily bemused themselves by the singing of
amorous or patriotic ballads, lost money over the Ascot Gold Cup. At about 4 p.m. an act of
adultery was consummated at the residence of one Leopold Bloom, advertisement-canvasser.(3)

It is also Stuart Gilbert who argues in favor of the planning and calculations which went
into the novel, and also he who notices that the main node, the central nucleus and the one which
dictates the rank of all the other nuclei in the story, is the meeting between the two male
characters. Going back to the correspondence with Homers Odyssey, our nuclei are much easier
to perceive as a trail, or a quest following the same map that Telemachus, Ulysses and Penelope
follow. Yet, in order to understand how Gilbert comes to this conclusion, we must first look at a
few symbolic elements which also act as catalysers - , or leitmotifs which dominate the novel.

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Chapter 2 The Functional Layer. Leitmotifs

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We remind the reader that catalysers are elements of the functional layer which are bound
by integrational relations. They connect across layers and only make sense when reunited with
all of their signifieds, which appear at different stages of the plot. The first leitmotif Stuart
Gilbert analyses is that of metempsychosis. As explained in the novel by Mr. Bloom to his
wife, metempsychosis is

the transmigration of soulsSome people believe that we go on living in another body after
death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth
thousands of years ago or on some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they
remember their past lives.''(Ulysses, 110)

Metempsychosis (connecting Calypso, Sireus, Nausicaa, and Circe) is therefore a

religious concept borrowed from eastern cultures, which underlines James Joyces fascination
with the East or what Stuart Gilbert calls the Drang nach Ostern. Concepts and ideas
pertaining to the East are to be found all throughout the novel, and connect not only nuclei, but
are also a common trait of many catalysers. the far East- lovely spot it must be: the garden of the
world, big lazy leaves to float onflowers of idlenesswater-lilies says Bloom in the chapter
named Lotus Eaters. The concept in itself is a background for the whole story, as the idea of
reincarnation is what drives the meeting between the two main characters, i.e. the center of the
novel. I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms, in other
words I am I through all the hundreds of lives, a concept of Eastern religions. As to what this
means to the two main characters and the nuclei of the narrative, we will see after analyzing and
connecting all leitmotifs.
The second leitmotif which can be observed in the novel is that of the omphalos - the
deepest connection existent, the cord which connects all energy to its source. This, too, is an
Eastern concept related to reincarnation. More powerful than parenthood in the Christian
religion, the connection of the energy to the source, to the omphalos, goes all the way back into
ones past lives - thus the connection with metempsychosis. The navel is the seat of the prophetic
power which in Ulysses becomes modernized into a telephone line with Eden.
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The beginning of the journey is an omphalos: Mr. Bloom lives at No.7 Eccles Street, a
replica of the isle of Ogygia, where Calypso dwelt, states Gilbert, a navel of the sea, as Homer
calls it (54). Stephens tower is also a reference to the Omphalos, a place where Stephen
mockingly reenacts the Catholic religious traditions, the round tower where even though
tenements die the landlord is immortal.
Yet the omphalos appears much earlier in the story, namely in the chapter named
Proteus, when while contemplating on the beach Stephen Dedalus sees two midwives, one of
them carrying a bag. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing
navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.
(35). The omphalos thus appears in many circumstances and under many forms a telephone
line with the Heavens, a navelcord and even in the shape of Mrs. Mina Purefoy, the prophetic
mother with no blemish i.e. no navel, or in other words the starting point of all life. The scene
in which she appears in Circe connects it with Telemachus by the analogy of rituals the
chalice and the two shafts of light being the common setting in both chapters.
Paternity is a very heavy leitmotif in Ulysses as it differs from one character to the other,
and is one of the most common concepts throughout the novel. First and foremost, there is an
idea of paternity in the case of Leopold Bloom, a father who can no longer fulfill his role as his
son died in infancy. Thoughts of little Rudy haunt this paternal figure from the beginning and
until the end of his day. In Stuart Gilberts words, Rudy is the mistake of karma, the force
created by a person's actions that is believed in Hinduism and Buddhism to determine what that
person's next life will be like 8 in fact, all children who die at or soon after birth are just
misplaced souls which have to die in order to be reincarnated in their rightful place.
For Stephen Dedalus, paternity occurs in the shape of a non-existent father, or more exactly, a
non-connection with his father Stephens attitude is really one of despair; he has not lost a
father, but he can never find one (Gilbert 64). Stephen Dedalus himself asserts: Fatherhood, in
the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic
succession, from only begotten to only begotten. (Ulysses, 170)

8 Merriam-Webster online dictionary entry for karma

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These are not the only leitmotifs in the novel a number of symbols connected to cultural
identity such as Irish or Semitic references make the subject of dialogues between characters and
of recorded thoughts. As mentioned before, all of these leitmotifs double as catalysers in the
sense that they trigger certain streams of thoughts for each character for example, the funeral
Mr Bloom attends reminds him of his deceased son and thenceforth an array of regrets and
sadness cover the pages of the novel.
The leitmotifs enumerated in the paragraphs above make the reader analyze the novel
through an eastern spiritual perspective, which in turn leads us to look at the two main male
characters not as unconnected people who meet by chance, but as intertwined souls brought
together by a powerful karma. So there we have a father who has lost a son too soon to call
himself a true father, and a son who has never known the presence of a paternal figure in his life.
This is where Stuart Gilbert finds the center of the novel where all catalysers reunite, they lead
to the reunion between spiritual father and spiritual son, the karmic connection which surpasses
time and even death and finally reunites the two male protagonists, making all the other actions
in the novel fall into place. Here we as readers realize that all that has come before this moment
is introduced as a form of anticipation and suspense, and everything that comes after, a
continuation of this union and its finale.
The functional layer in James Joyces Ulysses is therefore constituted of nuclei revolving
around a center which is the meeting between the two male protagonists, nuclei which in turn
follow the pattern set by Homers Odyssey. The actions are a trail of common happenings in a
very ordinary day in the lives of the characters having breakfast, going to the public baths,
attending a funeral etc easy to follow in the background of a sometimes overwhelming stream
of thoughts. The question which arises at this point is: are there nuclei in this stream of thoughts
as well? The answer depends on the way one perceives the story. If we choose to see Joyces
novel as a physical quest doubled by the voices of the consciousness of the characters, then the
nuclei in the functional layer all pertain to the realm of reality for example, cooking breakfast
or walking along the streets of Dublin. However, if we are to look at the story as an odyssey of
the thoughts, a journey one takes within the consciousnesses of three different characters
throughout a day of June 16th, 1904, then the number of the nuclei rises exponentially. Every stop
in the trail of thoughts becomes a nuclei instead of a catalyser thoughts of little Rudy, thoughts
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of Stephens deceased mother. Whichever perspective one decides is more compatible with the
novel leads, however, to the same narratological pattern, of a constellation of nuclei revolving
around the central, fated meeting.

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Chapter 3 - The Action Layer

As mentioned in the introductory chapter to this thesis, narratology defines characters as

actants rather than as psychologically complex human figures. In other words, characters matter
to the narratologist to the extent of their role in the plot.
The first aspect we need to mention when analyzing James Joyces Ulysses is that, given
the stream of consciousness technique the author makes use of, the three main characters of the
novel influence the flow of the plot in more than one way on the one hand, they act as every
other character in every other story, where their actions, or physical movement, reverberates in
the space around them and thus plays a vital role in moving the plot along. On the other hand,
their thoughts give us a second stratum of actions, namely what does not happen in the physical
world yet takes place just the same for both fictional character and material reader. Jenifer
Levine notices that this technique enhances the connection one develops with these fictional
figures: My point here is not merely that Ulysses breaches the borders of propriety. More than
that: it can give the internal life of characters with an extraordinary sense of intimacy. (132)
The main body of the novel has already been sketched out through the functional layer
namely the nuclei yet this voluminous work is far from being completely bare of secrets if we
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are to terminate our analysis with just the physical, kinetic aspect of the plot we need to dive
into the characters consciousness. It might seem like a grueling task at first after all, thoughts
do move chaotically many a time however, Jennifer Levine points out,

once you realize that much of what is happening inside Stephens headwhole chunks of the
novel become available. Instead of unnerving and frustrating shifts from one kind of language to
another, even from one story to another, you recognize that you are tracking a mind in action and
respond accordingly. (132)

The three main characters of Ulysses are Stephen Dedalus the son , Leopold Bloom
the father , and Molly Bloom. There is also a fourth character whom Don Gifford names,
inspired by Aristotles definition of the drama, the chorus(2), constituted of the collective body
of citizens who populate the novel. Who is each of these character and what desires and
obsessions haunt them is of no interest to us in this particular analysis apart from being stirred
into action by catalysers, the characters thoughts only matter from a narratological point of view
because they double the physical journey that unravels throughout the novel. It is, however, a lot
easier to understand the actions layer of the novel if we take a look at the connections between
these three main characters.
As we have seen earlier in the thesis, the connection between Ulysses and the Odyssey
determines a reading of the three main characters as the modern copies of Telemachus, Ulysses
and Penelope. This interpretation encourages the reader to see not as much the resemblance for
example the paternal relationship between the two male protagonists as the difference between
the two versions. The most prominent of the three is Molly Bloom, whose adulterous behavior is
the exact opposite of Penelopes famed loyalty to her long-gone husband. Penelopes efforts to
remain pure, distant from the dirty world outside her house, the weaving and unweaving of a
complex pattern keeps her closer to the spiritual rather than the carnal sphere, which contrasts
Mollys coarse language, her sensual thoughts, her sharp and unforgiving judgment of the male
psyche.

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Of Stephen Dedalus, Jenifer Levine states: Stephen may be cast as Telemachus, but he
thinks he is playing Hamlet. His actions are not those of a son on a desperate quest for his
father, but rather quite the opposite: having had no concept of what a fatherly figure is, being in
no need of one and feeling neither hate nor love for the male parent, Stephens journey is not an
active one. He opens his heart to Bloom when they meet yet unlike Telemachus, he does not
search for his father - the two reunite not as a result of sustained efforts but as a fated
coincidence. Bloom himself does not present the virtues of the powerful Ulysses he is quiet
with respect to his wifes adultery, and if Ulysses is a legendary hero, Bloom is the common
Dubliner who entertains meaningless conversations with his old acquaintances and wonders
about the thoughts of his cat.
While this is one interpretation of the relationships between characters, another trend
describes Stephen, Mr. Bloom and Mrs. Bloom as the fundamental psychic triad established by
Freud ID, Ego and Superego, where Stephen is the Superego, Mr. Bloom the Ego, and Mrs.
Bloom the ID. Given Stephens over-contemplative nature and Mrs. Blooms unashamed
discourse this theory, too, is not to be dismissed. Yet another perspective sees the theological
aspect of the work proof of Joyces Catholic beliefs are to be found all throughout the novel,
starting from the most obvious which Stephens obsession with his mothers dying wish and
assesses that the protagonists are the image or the holy trinity Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Why
Bloom and Stephen are Father and Son has been explained earlier, yet for a being as far from the
spiritual as Molly Bloom the association seems forced, to say the least. However, when the two
male characters are sitting silently in the room one of them is contemplating Mollys silhouette:
the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a
visible splendid sign, a lamp the mysterious shadow which is the Holy Spirit.
Out of these three interpretations, James Joyce himself seems to lean towards the first
one. In a letter to Carlo Linati, he states The character of Ulysses always fascinated me even
when a boy (Letters I, 146). Going back to our narratological analysis, Roland Barthes writes of
an axis along which all characters in a story move communication, desire and ordeal. Let us
first stop and apply this theory on Homers Odyssey. Telemachus, who in terms of appearance is
unequaled by any other character, displays a complete evolution along the aforementioned axis:
he communicates his displeasure with the situation which arises from his fathers extended
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absence, reaching the desire to leave on a journey to bring him back and end the ridiculous
battles over Penelopes heart. His ordeal starts when he embarks, continuing in the form of his
voyage, and ending only when husband and wife, father and mother are reunited. The other two
characters, however, we find in the midst of their ordeal, their communication and desire stages
having already taken place before the start of the narrative, and being made known to the reader
by the voice of the narrator. On the other hand, the characters in James Joyces Ulysses seem to
stagnate instead of moving along an axis, or rather seem to be moving out of inertia instead of
being driven by desire all the way through ordeal. Stephen, who has come back to Dublin to
attend to his dying mother and has refused her last wish, Leopold Bloom who tends to his
business on that particular day attending a funeral, visiting a newspaper house etc all the
while avoiding the reality of his wifes adulterous behavior, and Molly Bloom who entertains
another man on the marital bed, all of them are on a journey but none of them desire anything
specific although in the end Stephen receives a father and Leopold, a son.
While most if not all narratives use their characters as tools in fulfilling a certain
pattern of actions and this, E.M. Forster observes, is most clearly felt starting mid-story,
somewhere half-way between the first page and the last page of the novel James Joyces
characters do not fall in the same routine. Stephen, Leopold and Molly are the protagonists of
Ulysses but are not so much actants as they are story-tellers, narrators. This in turn makes for a
thin actions layer, much thinner than in the case of other novels of the or before the time.

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Chapter 4 The Narration Level. Discourse.

With no first-step narrative guideline such as the Odyssey to follow, and thus no definite idea of
what structure and thematic principles should frame his new project, Joyce picked from rough
lexical jottings and embryonic story elements compiled in the now familiar notebooks, often
exploring anew old concerns from various narrative approaches, and composed disconnected
sketches, later to become the works anchoring points, scattered evenly throughout the book in
order to ensure its cohesiveness. (Milesi, 3)

Joyces obsession with language is no new information to his readers. An Irishman both
in heart and in upbringing, Joyce as a writer assimilated a reality which is specific to Dublin: a
combination of dialects and accents which are so heavily used that it gives the impression of a
different tongue altogether. Joyce himself stated that for him English is indeed a foreign language
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and will never be anything else; hence his mastery of using it as a tool for his own purposes
rather than protecting its acquired unity. Id like a language which is above all languages [. . .]. I
cannot express myself in English without enclosing myself in a tradition quotes Laurent Miles
from James Joyce in his study of the novelists language (21) and defamiliarization of the
language used in the novel is a feat Joyce attempts to achieve by employing numerous artifices.
First and foremost, what can be easily observed both in Homer and in Joyce is the use of
idioms countless idioms of the English language, but this is not the final stop. He borrows from
over a dozen other languages not only idioms, but also terms defining philosophical concepts,
for example, which in Ulysses are not translated but rather used as such, in their language of
invention. Another defining characteristic of the discourse in Ulysses is the use of numerous
accents pertaining to each of the characters. What Joyce does is mimic the everyday language of
Irishmen, thus providing the reader with an accurate account of a day in Dublin an effect which
is amplified by the photographic descriptions of the city as perceived through all five senses of
the characters. The loyalty Joyce has for his Irish identity does not end here: the syntax of the
sentence is typical for a language of Gaelic descent, Hugh Kenner points out, as it has a tendency
of skipping any overt conjunctions in case of sentence subordination.9
Initial consternation may relate to the many words Joyce used that cannot be found in standard
dictionaries and to the fact that grammatical rules appear frequently suspended. Joyce often did
not edit his chaotic material into the spheres of sanctioned, correct, periods.(28) Milesi states. It
is true that Joyce felt the need to invent many of the words he used in his work, and the author
does not hide the fact that standard English which he uses everyday fails in delivering an
accurate description of the world. Such an example comes at the beginning of Calypso, in the
form of a dialogue between Bloom and his cat: Mkgnao! cries the cat, and then Mrkgnao!,
and then again, loudly, Mrkrgnao! and to his cats very specific three cries, Bloom answers:
Miaow!, a recording of the mans rendition of the sounds his cat produces, not quite the same as
the original. Along with making the difference between the two beings feline and human
clear by using different spellings, Joyce also underlines two very important aspects of his work
as a writer: the first is that he has to use his ability to identify what Jenifer Levine calls the
9 Subordinations like At first she wondered had she mistaken the hour or Both of them
[. . .] said she must be perished alive and asked was Gabriel with them (D 139, 177) recur;
they may indicate underlying Gaelic patterns or social distinctions, while literary English
usage would prefer a conjunctional link. (Milesi, 29)

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conventionality of language (Attrige 129); the second, that he has the obligation to transcribe it
as is.
We are not to forget the most important aspect of the novel from the point of view of
discourse: the use of stream-of-consciousness technique. Literary critic Laurent Milesi is of the
opinion that the mind has its own grammar and does not have to explain itself to the outside
world.(30) and that writing is, among other things, a translation of mental bursts and jumbles or
spoken disarray into a systematic shape.(28), the key word in this short construction being
systematic. In other words he believes that regardless of how true any translation of the human
mind into literary writing is to the initial budding thoughts, the duty of any writer is to pass them
through a filter of rules of structure between noting them down on paper. This is a theory which,
most of the time, does not apply to Joyce: sentences that have gone askew, passages that would
have to be marked by school teachers. Maybe the term sentence is already inappropriate, for a
sentence is a finished verbal construct, fashioned according to rules, and it is easier to achieve in
(revisional) writing than in impromptu speech (Milesi 28).
What is Joyces intention when he displays such disorganized discourse seemingly not
bothering with any common-sense rules of grammar and ultimately, with the readers response
and understanding of the novel? And how come, despite the initial shock upon a fist encounter
with the work, it still makes sense even to the reader who is not cultured enough to follow every
literary (and otherwise) allusion in the text, every dialect and every idiom?
Joyce, who often compared verbal creations to biological processes, tried to catch thoughts in
statu nascendi, before articulation. Stephen Dedalus has a highly developed verbal consciousness
(Daedalus was an architect/engineer), his mind seems to aim at instant enunciation. His most
convoluted, Protean speculations on the beach are formally perfected. Bloom, on the other hand,
lacking the gift of instant gab, is continually groping. (Milesi 30)

The effect Joyce achieves is double: on the one hand, there is a better, more thorough
understanding of the difference between characters which penetrates through their appearance
and the language they use whilst in dialogue with other persons, and through to the very birth of
their thoughts, the other effect being that of capturing an essence of mind which is universal to
all humans and thus understandable even to the less-informed reader a state before the
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perfected sentence, before syntax . Readers may not even notice the shift as shift and adjust
automatically. In our own private thoughts we do not have to specify what or who it is we are
thinking of at any fleeting moment; one good reason why Molly need not spell out the multiple
hes and hims in her monologue (Milesi 29)
In his study of James Joyces Ulysses, Vincent Sherry states that the half-way mark
locates the moment at which the complications of situation and desire begin to move toward
resolution. Incidents and people that occurred at first for their own sakenow have to contribute
to the denouement.(4). Ulysses, however, is an exception. In order to avoid this common trap
which most novelists fall into, Joyce chooses to concentrate not so much on the unraveling of the
plot as on the narrative technique; he erases any trace of headlong movement. Each chapter
dilates into stylistic performance, shifting its source of energy from the linear continuum of plot
or sequential events to language itself. (Sherry 4). Sherry identifies this shift more or less at the
mid-point (after the tenth chapter10) but warns the reader that Joyces choice of frequent change
in technique is not always perceived as a beneficial pick. Quite on the contrary, Forster argues:
the attention to language threatens to overthrow the essence, the purpose of the story, making the
verbal constructs employed behave as architectures of sound turning in avoid (Sherry 4) 11. In
order to appeal to this theory we must first analyze the text at hand. For this, we will go back to
Gilberts Schema of the chapters in Ulysses, which assigns a technic to each of the chapters :
Telemachus is assigned the techinc Narrative(young), Nestor falls under Catechism
(personal)12, Proteus is a display of Monologue(male), Calypsos technique is
Narrative(mature), Lotus-Eaters is described simply through the word Narcissism, Hades
is an example of what Gilbert calls Incubism, and which most likely comes from the word
Incubus, a nightmare or nightmarish spirit which attacks humans in their sleep (MerriamWebster). Yet even though each technic bears a different name the first six chapters are all
10 i.e. Wandering Rocks
11 Here Sherry uses his own words to relate what E.M Forster asserts in his 1927
treatise named Aspects of the Novel
12 Merriam-Webster defines catechism as a collection of questions and answers
that are used to teach people about the Christian religion
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connected by the stream of consciousness which is, after all, present and perfected throughout
this first part of the work. Although Joyce seemed to embark with each new work on a radically
different experiment in literary language, it is more helpful to see the whole Joycean output as a
discrete continuum in which apparently new departures in fact redeployed earlier narrativelinguistic habits in a different guise. (Milesi 1)
The first shift in narrative technique is apparent in the seventh chapter of the work, Aeolus. After
the initial shock the reader feels when he starts reading Ulysses the author gives a six chapters
time of accommodation with the striking writing style; and if while passing through these first
six chapters the unassuming reader starts getting accustomed to the technique, Joyce delivers a
complete change in style in chapter seven. Jenifer Levine describes the shift from Bloom and
Stephens minds as main focus to the newspaper office as follows: To come upon such an
opening, especially after the intimacy of Hades, is as unnerving as suddenly discovering in the
midst of a noisy foreign city that you have lost your guide, that there is no one to speak for you
and no one whose language you understand.(133).What makes Aeolus so strikingly different is
the fact that here the voices of the characters are replaced with voices of machines and sounds of
the environment- much more foreign and much more chaotic, and thus a lot harder to understand.
What Joyce achieves through foregrounding this thicket of language (133) as Levine calls it, is
compelling the reader to pay attention to the surroundings as much as he did to the characters,
constructing the image of the city by using senses other than those ordinarily employed. we
begin to pay attention to other voices in Aeolus, to other entries and
exits, to other bursts of talk, and to other silences.(Attrige 133) The city becomes much more
than the setting for Ulysses action, it becomes a character in itself.
Joyce may not even know he was following classical precedent, for Homers syntax at
times is less logical than implied, suggests Laurent Milesi in his book, James Joyce and the
Difference of Language (31). However, as we have argued in the previous chapters, Joyces
admiration for the Odyssey and the inspiration he so obviously found in this epic would prove
the contrary: James Joyce knew exactly what he was doing when he built on more than just the
structure of Homers work therefore the language, too, is very similar.

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Chapter 5 The Narration Layer. Narrator and time.

We remind the reader of this short paper that in terms of narratological theory the
narration layer is not only use of language per se, but how said language aids in the process of
communicating a message to the reader and how it helps structure the functions of the novel. In
that respect, we must first take a look at the use of words which suggest the presence of the
donor je and of the receiver tu. For this purpose I have chosen for analysis Mollys speech in
the last part of the novel Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture
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on him every Saturday almost. The standard form of this sentence should have been He (the
husband) is setting up house for her time after time and she (the wife) is pawning the furniture on
him every Saturday almost. The reason why the subjects he and she are not overt is, in
Laurent Milesis opinion, the following: In our own private thoughts we do not have to specify
what or who it is we are thinking of at any fleeting moment (29). In other words, not stating the
subject makes the account of Mollys thoughts that much closer to the original and that much
more realistic for the reader. However, from a narratological point of view, Joyces choice of
eliminating important parts of the message is not an ordinary one, and the message comes across
as incomplete in terms of donor and receiver.
This utter disregard for naming either subject or object in the sentence by name - thus
making it confusing as the character shifts from reference of one man to the other and to all
might suggest that for Joyce there is no receiver tu at all as we have stated in the introductory
chapter to this thesis, the receiver is not overtly mentioned but rather suggested by presence of
information which the narrator or characters would not need to mention otherwise. In Ulysses the
thoughts of the characters are written down with such loyalty to their true form in the characters
mind that not only is the tu almost impossible to perceive, the je (the subject) itself is mostly
never present which, as the rules of grammar tell us, is a mistake in the English language.
However, let us take a passage which Milesi analyzes from Blooms speech: Anyhow upon
weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the
night. (Ulysses, 1077) Examining the use of it in the passage Milesi observes:

There is little question that it is Bloom who is weighing up the pros and cons, but it is not
Bloom, as we would inevitably suspect on a first run, who is getting on for one, but an abstract
it, which refers to time, as is borne out with some redundancy in the sequel. So we backtrack
and can now contemplate the various changes of a grammatical subject, from an implied Bloom
to a first it which is not quite identical with the next one: it was high time. The initial upon
weighing [. . .] is left dangling. (31).

Apart from the changes in subject and the multiple uses of the word it, there is one
observation left to be done when looking at the fragment above: the narrator of the construction

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is not Bloom, or rather his thoughts are shared in a full, coherent sentence as if related to the
reader by a third person narrator.
These slight shifts in narrative perspective are present throughout the novel, from Bloom
to Stephen to Molly and to a fourth narrator who oversees their actions and frequently steps in to
describe their movement or their surroundings where the stream-of-consciousness technique fails
to give a detailed account. This aspect also constitutes one of the major differences between
Homers and Joyces works: while the Odyssey is completely externally focalized Ulysses
presents a range of shifts in focalization throughout the novel. Literary critics 13 have split the
novel into three sections based on these shifts, as follows: the first part is comprised of the
chapters Telemachus through Hades; the second, Aelous Nausicaa, and the third Oxen
of the Sun to the last chapter, Penelope. The theory on which this categorization is based
comes from the shifts in focalization the effect that Joyce is trying to achieve is that of
darkening, of fading reason: as the night falls on the city and fatigue takes over the senses the
speech, too, is more brusque and less easy to understand, reality blends with dream and
hallucination and focalizing eyes move from one target to the other, from one perspective to the
next in a blurring sequence. However, although overall this convention makes sense, there are
some chapters which stand out from the point of view of narrative focus and which we must
analyze accordingly.
We remind the reader that in Roland Barthes study of narratology there are only two types of
narrators personal and apersonal which can be distinguished through the use of 1 st person for
the first 2nd person for the latter, leaving 3rd person usage to be a part of one category or the other
depending on whether or not it can be changed to 1st person without altering the discourse. The
two narrators are often interchanged and keeping a record of these changes is not the purpose of
this work; yet if we are to understand the narration layer of Ulysses we must at least determine
which of the two is predominant and how they combine to deliver the message from a
narratlogical point of view. In order to analyze this aspect of the novel we must first identify the
narrator and its voice. In plain language, everything else that cannot be identified with a
characters voice belongs to that of the narrator (Saraireh 2); what is considered as the
characters voice is every element of dialogue, external and internal monologue (Saraireh 2).
Everything else in terms of voices in the novel comes in the form of a ubiquitous narrator, who
13 Lisette Bakker, Dr. Dafer Y. Saraireh, Dr. Abdul-Qader A. Khattab
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is unidentifiable with any of the characters in the story, or a personified narrator who relates the
events from a characters point of view, a character who is active or passive to the unfolding
action. The first six chapters or the first part of the novel display focalization shifts from
Stephen Dedalus in the first three chapters and Mr. Leopold Bloom in the last three, and the
heterodiegetic narrator. Before analyzing an example of the above-named shifts in focalization,
we must first stop and investigate the third person narrator.
In Ulysses, the third person narrator is a voice which appears throughout the novel and is
intertwined with the voices of the characters, giving details about their appearance or their
movements, and many times about their environment, aspects which are otherwise left out from
the ever-flowing stream of thoughts. Doctors Saraireh and Khattab make the assessment that,
depending on the chapter, this third person voice pertains to one of the main characters present 14
for example in Nestor Stephens interaction with Talbot has as a background the description
of the latters actions. Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel or Talbot repeated. Whether
this is Stephens voice or the voice of an unknown character the two Middle-eastern critics assess
can be determined once we analyze the specific tone or style of the utterance. For example,
looking at instances in Proteus they observe the particular tang of Blooms voice dominating
the narration (5) while in Calypso the narrator is generally quite loyal to Bloom (5).
However, they also identify a completely autonomous narrator underlying independent presence
through his humor (5), a voice which is subtly ironic and contrasts both Bloom and Stephen.
Whichever presence the voice belongs to is, however, irrelevant to Barthes theory: all instances
of such 3rd person observations which cannot be replaced with their 1st person counterparts
without altering the message are evidence of an apersonal narrator.
How shifts from an apersonal to a personal narrator occur in Ulysses can be examined more
closely in the first chapter of the novel:

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle
to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror,
while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down.
Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te vergininum shorus excipiat.

14 The Narrators Transformation in James Joyces Ulysses, page 4

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Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!

No mother. Let me be and let me live.

Kinch ahoy!
Buck Mulligans voice sang from the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again.
Stephen, still trembling at his souls cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him
friendly words.(8)

The first paragraph is easily identifiable as Stephens internal focalization, not only
judging from the subjective tone of the passage, that of a son affected by thoughts of his
mothers ghost , but given the fact that the personal pronouns used are all first person. The same
third person voice in the last paragraph no longer belongs to Stephen, or to any of the characters
present as it refers to the two as Buck Mulligan and Stephen. It is still Stephens internal
impersonation of his mothers voice when he says Ghoul! Chewer of corpses and his pretend
response in this internal dialogue with himself when he requests No mother. Let me live.(8)
The externalized dialogue present in the fragment as throughout the novel in general is easily
noticeable through its specific dialogue dash which precedes it.
Thus the first six chapters do not confuse the reader as to who the narrator is and how the
action is focalized; the change in technique appears yet again in Aeolus where the narration as
told by the newspaper clippings blends with Blooms own interventions and with Stephen
Dedalus remarks. What is curious is that although the character which seemed to be the main
focalizer of this chapter exits the scene halfway through the action, the style remains unchanged.
If we are to refer to Joyces scheme as it was published in Stuart Gilberts study, the technique
for this chapter is named Enthymemic, a term coming from enthymeme, a syllogism in which
one of the premises is implicit15. Lisette Bakker explains this choice of words as follows: the
main focalizer is always present, Bloom is missing in this part, therefore, Bloom is not the main
focalizer (31). Once again, Aeolus is seen as a landmark dividing the first two parts of the
novel in terms of narrative focalization. From this point onwards the alternations are a lot more
subtle and the interventions of the apersonal narrator, a lot shorter.
15 Merriam-Webster
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Ah.
His hand fell again to his side.
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each other,
passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas, then solid, then world, then cold, then dead shell
drifting around, frozen rock like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon, she said. I
believe there is.
He went on by la Maison Claire.
Wait. (149)

The main focus is Bloom and his unmistakable, specific stream of thoughts, short and
rapid, down to earth and springing from a subject to the next in hurried enumerations. The
apersonal narrator intervenes to describe Blooms actions more as a way of providing the reader
with a map of the characters movement than enhancing the subject of the monologue.
What this technique achieves is a puzzle of elements focalized from different
perspectives and all giving different sides of the same character. Dialogue is doubled by internal
monologue; stream of consciousness technique observes the internal confrontations of the
character while eyes watching from the exterior provide the reader with an account of the
appearance of the character without the interior tumult. Bakker provides us with an example
Mild fire of wine kindles his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily
saw shelves of tins, sardines, gaudy lobsters claws (156). She explains: This is an example of
the main realist event: while Bloom is thinking, the world outside goes on seeing him sometimes,
or parts of him, but his thoughts are unseen and he keeps on thinking(32). While most chapters
have as main focalizer one of the two main male characters in Ulysses, more or less aided by the
apersonal narrator, there are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, the unnamed first person
narrator which one critic attempted to demonstrate is Simon Dedalus, father of Stephen
Dedalus16 - is a clear reference to the character of Cyclops from Homers Odyssey and occurs
only in chapter twelve. Saraireh warns us about the identity of this narrator: as opposed to
Stephen Dedalus, Mr. and Mrs. Bloom, this narrator is one and the same voice which appears
16 E.I. Schoenberg in Journal of Modern Literature Vol.5 No.3, Sep. 1976, considers
the anonymity of the narrator to be a deliberate riddle posed as one of many
parallels to the original Cyclops story (534)
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throughout the novel, molding itself into styles and assimilating different techniques. It has been
playing with impersonations since the outset (10), the critic underlines, and goes on in his
assessment: We should look at the Nameless One as the narrator itself, dressed in one of his
guises, or ventriloquising through this puppet (11).
Lisette Bakker argues that if we are to understand exactly how focalization can give meaning to a
certain literary work and how it can help emphasize different interpretations, we are to take a
closer look at the last chapter in Ulysses, Penelope. It is the only chapter which has a woman as
its main focalizer, and if we further analyze the novel we will observe that women in general
play a very small role: they are excluded from active participation in urban life. Mrs. Dedalus
(though she haunts Stephen) is dead and buried, Milly missed but absent, and Molly housebound
and recumbent (almost incarcerated) throughout the day. Other female characters serve as objects
of the male gaze, as reflections of the male desire, as means for male begetting of male heirs
(Garvey 108). Molly Bloom, too, is haunted by the patriarchal behavior she observes in the
males around her and more often than not submits to this situation as to an inevitable fate, not
that I care two straws (873). Her only clear description is made from the inside - her outside
being just a fleeting shadow formed in the mind of the reader like a puzzle put together from
small and random hints seen through the eyes of the male characters in the novel in the form of
a long and straining trail of thought which goes on without any punctuation marks and ends only
when she drifts off into dormancy. It is Ulysses particularity that one can discuss gender from a
narratological point of view, Bekker asserts:

Narratologists pay (infinitely) more attention to a narrators diegetic situation or degree of

covertness than, for instance, to a narrators sex or gender presumably because every narrator can
be described as extra- or intra-, homo- or heterodiegetic and every narrator can be described as
more or less overt or covert but not every narrator can be characterized in sexual or gender terms
(Prince, 35)

One final aspect which pertains to the level of narration is time time not in the sense of
specific hours as they appear in Stuart Gilberts table, and which Joyce seems to mock given the
fact that he provided the same clock but with small differences to Carlo Linati but time in the
sense of distortion and its consequence, suspense. We have stated before that the action in
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Ulysses revolves around a central nucleus which is the meeting between Stephen Dedalus and
Leopold Bloom, and that this meeting is postponed through artifices concerning all layers of the
narrative. Processes which make this postponement possible are language-related, mainly
dystaxia which we defined in the first part of this thesis. Don Gifford speaks about the
complexity of time in the novel, calling it a mimetic time or various imitations of time, a rich
mix of clock time, psychological time and mnemonic time. These combinations come from the
unpredictability of thought, which obviously does not follow a set pattern, or a chronological
timeline: between each event in the literary work there is a zigzag of past, present and future
nodes of action which take place in the characters consciousness. What Don Gifford insists upon
is the entrapment of Ulysses as a writing mid-point between drama and epic from the point of
view of time. In Aristotles words, Tragedy [drama] endeavors, as far as possible, to confine
itself to a single revolution of the sun;whereas the Epic action has no limits of time 17 whereas
James Joyces novel presents itself as an epic, describing a certain bundle of events in the
characters lives whether they are exceptional or not is to be up to the readers to decide but
stays within the present tense of one day from beginning to the last page. In this sense, Ulysses
once again differs from its writing of inspiration, the Odyssey, being contracted within one day
and within one city although the thoughts of the characters cover much larger stretches of time
in an arguably more tumultuous journey. If we are to measure in more exact units, each nucleus
is approximately fifteen minutes away from the next, yet time becomes more and more uncertain
as the clock approaches midnight, and is almost completely disregarded after that.
Trying to map all events in Ulysses on a specific timetable is what Carlo Linati and Stuart Gilbert
struggled to achieve, yet for narratological purposes accurate timing is more or less irrelevant.
What matters to our cause is the fact that time for the reader or rather, as Don Gifford calls it,
reading time (3) distorts, and while Bloom takes a five-minute stroll from the bridge to the
front of Trinity College, the reader spends twenty minutes going through the detailed account of
his thoughts. Twenty minutes of prose time is being manipulated to imitate five minutes of halfformed thought-perception time, thought-perception that could be verbalized but usually is
not(3) and even more extreme are the hallucinations in Circe, where approximately 21 pages

17 S.H. Butcher. Aristotles Theory of Poetry and Fine Art with a Critical Text and
Translation of the Poetics. London, 1907, p.23.
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of apparitions are framed between two rapid utterances of the same character: Go on. Make a
stump speech out of itTalk away till youre black in the face (478-99).
We have little way of knowing how long each fragment takes time-wise. However, each
and every distraction and distortion contributes to the fascinating structure of Ulysses: playing
with different mimetic times in the level of narration, jumping from one thought to the other
without any regard for traditional punctuation rules, disrupting time and space and folding it
back to its original place, shifting the narrative focus with few markers making it hardly
noticeable, all the while keeping the functions within their specific level steadily flowing towards
the denouement, and the structure of the novel, all the while, intact.

Part III MODERNISM AND JOYCES SINGULARITY

When Ulysses was first published in 1922 fans and critics gathered around it in two very
different camps: Ezra Pound wrote, in a letter to Joyce in May, 1922 Unite to give praise to
Ulysses; those who will not, may content themselves with a place in the lower intellectual
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orders (Read 194). T.S. Eliot argued that it made the modern world possible for art (Attrige
122). Others, however, were not so enthusiastic. They regarded Joyces revolutionary novel as
crude, obscene, proof being its prosecution for obscenity after the publication of Nausicaa in
the American journal The Little Review in 1920.

Virginia Woolf, too, called the work a

memorable catastrophe immense in daring, terrific in disaster (Sampson 877). Years after its
publishing and the contestation of its censorship which was consequently removed, critics are
agreeing upon its incontestable value, placing it at the center of the modernist movement, a
demonstration and summation of the entire movement (Beebe 176).
Although the first aspect which strikes the reader to the point of irritating 18 him or her is
the language of the novel, the structure which might not be as obvious until after a few hours of
reading into the work is exceptional, too. In order to find out just how Ulysses differs from a
narratological perspective from other modernist novels I have dedicated the third and final part
of this thesis to comparing its structure to that of Woolfs and Richardsons works. After
exploring the female writers approach as it explained in Deborah Parsons research I will draw a
conclusion for each of the three layers (functional, actions and narrative).
Ulysses was born in a period of tumult and the thoughts and creative minds of the writers in the
twentieth century were shaped by the history and ideas which surrounded them:

That the age of the earth is 3,000,000,000 years; that human life lasts but a second; that the
capacity of the human mind is nevertheless boundless; that life is infinitely beautiful yet
repulsive; that ones fellow creatures are adorable but disgusting; that science and religion have
between them destroyed belief; that all bonds of union are broken, yet some control must exist
it is in this atmosphere of doubt and conflict that writers have now to create (Parsons 2)

It was the writers obligation to incorporate and give voice to these complex ideas and
traditional techniques no longer served them in doing so. The boundaries of classical definitions
18 Deborah Parsons paraphrases Arnold Benett who declared that he regarded Ulysses
from two extremes: either bored by its pervading difficult dullness (Deming, 1970: 219) or
shocked to the point of dropping it. Pg 41.

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and rules were stretched to fit the times and these changes were, perhaps, felt most dominantly in
the case of the novel. Although, as Jenifer Levine correctly observes, the novel is most resistant
to definition (132), nevertheless the tendency at the time was to attempt an all-comprising
theorization that would put this type of work in a clear-cut category, one which apparently all
novels of the time proudly evaded. because the novel, instead of being a form, was simply the
expression of an age which had not sufficiently lost all form to feel the need of something
stricter (Parsons 43)
Virginia Woolf writes All novels deal with character, andit is to express character
that the form of the novels, so clumsy, so verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has
been evolved (Attrige 132) yet of her own writing she states I have an idea that I will invent a
new name for my books to supplant novelA new ? by Virginia Woolf. But what? 19. Each
writer had its different approach to the task, and in the end only few of them are truly
comparable. Having chosen the same character-centered, stream-of-consciousness, inwardlooking modus operandi, James Joyce falls in the same category as Virginia Woolf and Dorothy
Richardson.20 Their attempts to represent reality have led to a specific sort of psychological
realism:

Formally radical, subjectively real and aesthetically autonomous, expressive of a world in which the
present seems dislocated from the past, experience is fragmented, multiple and limitless, and
previous certainties about the physical world and our selfhood within it have been swept away;
this was the art that Joyce,Woolf and Richardson sought to create. (Parsons 3)

As alike as their literary writings set out to be, the outcome is completely different. They
all started from the same idea: that their novels were to sketch reality as it was at the time, to go
against tradition and the monotonous writing style which always seemed to flow the same way,
unable to grasp the ever-changing truth of the times. Yet their concept of reality proved to be
19 Diary entry in 1927 as quoted by Deborah Parsons in Theorists of the Modernist
Novel. James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf. Pg. 2
20 Parsons chooses this grouping which I believe serves the purpose of comparing
Ulysses to other works of the time from a narratological point of view
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fundamentally different, and in her critique of James Joyce whose preference for stream-ofconsciousness technique was not so distant from her own Virginia Woolf states with respect to
Ulysses: an illiterate, underbred bookthe book of a self-taught working manegotistic,
insistent, raw, striking and ultimately nauseating 21. Her first impression betrays her Victorian
upper-middle-class upbringing and her taste of literature cultured in the vicinity of her
Cambridge-enrolled brother and his friends another argument for the afore-mentioned
statement that the reality these writers were trying to convey was not at all alike. She will revise
her opinion, influenced for the most part by her admiration for Eliot who was an avid fan of
Joyces work, and write I reflected on how what I am doing is probably being better done by Mr
Joyce (Parsons 6)
Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms asserts Joyce in his essay The Art of
Fiction in 1884. While Wells, for example, sought to have a holistic approach to the study and
rendition of reality in his works, and fought for including all aspects of everyday life, from
business and finance to politics, Joyce makes it clear that for him the only relevant reality is that
filtered through the prism of human consciousness. His work is an attempt to grasp the innermost
fragments of thought, which tossed into the whirlpool of a days stream of consciousness
disappear before they are even fully formed.
Richardsons viewpoint in Pilgrimage revolves around the idea that what her main
character, Miriam, already knows, is not to be stated again in the novel. The reader will see the
world through the protagonists eyes and any further information would spoil the natural
universe of the girls consciousness. The unwavering focalization is doubled by the experimental
layout and punctuation: Richardson leaves out full stops, allows sentences to remain unfinished,
or switches between past and present tense or from third- to first- person narrative (Parsons 33).
Although the readers response suggests that the style was harder to accept than the publisher
would have had it desirable, the author strongly argues that punctuation is a tool which must be
used to serve a certain purpose and has been canonized to the disadvantage of revolution in
writing.22 Her aim was at a certain type of feminine realism which would mimic the natural
21 Diary entry on August 16, 1922
22 In an essay About Punctuation published in Adelphi in 1924, Richardson
argues that the rules of punctuation are only mechanical tools that help to make
communication straightforward and easybut they dull our responses to the natural
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psychology of women. It was not modernism who brought about the consideration that form
should change according to message so that the meaning of every literary work would come
across at its full potential, but if Richardson broke boundaries which led to confusion amongst
the readers, Joyce took this task to the extreme.

Joyce was not the person to keep to himself when it came to his opinion of his own writings he
advertised them with bustling confidence, an artifice which convinced the readers of the novelty
and value of each work even before they started reading the first lines. He provided Gilbert with
a schema that he himself would later admit was slightly exaggerating the stylistic endeavors of
the original writing23. He basically fed the readers an interpretation of his own novel based on the
connection with Homers work. This is the first way in which Joyces bold literary achievement
shocks: those who had already gone through the pages of the Odyssey now faced a completely
different writing style, a journey which was in no way out of the ordinary and a preconceived
idea that the two epics should match chapter by chapter. Contrasting all of Woolfs and
Richardsons writings, James Joyces Ulysses had as a functional layer the main structure of
nuclei of an already written and famous literary work. Having this basic schema as main
support, he then constructed a work which resembled noting of the time or before it, and which
writers still struggle to equal. This peculiar choice in structure is not in any way hidden it is
flaunted. In manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr.
Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any
more than the scientist who uses the discoveries of an Einstein in pursuing his own, independent,
further investigations24 (Parsons 43) underlines T.S. Eliot. Learning from our past and using
myth as a basis for literature is, he says, the best method for ordering an otherwise anarchical
age.
rhythm of prose (Parsons 33)
23 Deborah Parsons asserts that The schema has undoubtedly proved the most significant
example of Joyces wily and mischievous spin-doctoring of his literary reputation, but he
later regretted the emphasis on the virtuosity of the technics of the novel that it
encouraged. Pg 42.

24 T.S. Eliot. In Using the Myth, 1923.

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On the other hand, the trail of events is not so innovative or bizarre. As I have previously stated,
the purpose of modernist writings was to sketch a world that corresponded in all respects to a
reality of the times. Much as Richardson and Virginia Woolfs subjects, Joyces depiction is that
of an ordinary day in the life of his characters. The characters, too perfectly ordinary, the
prototype males and females of a specific early- twentieth century society; however, they receive
a twist in interpretation because of the comparison to their counterparts in the Homeric epic.
Coming from a culturally complex country such as Ireland, Joyce transposes many of the issues
of identity in the form of leitmotifs, and the language is as diverse as the one in real-life Dublin.
Shall we put life real life on the stage? . . . I think out of the dreary sameness of existence, a
measure of dramatic life may be drawn. Even the most commonplace, the deadest among the
living, may play a part in a great drama. . . .Life we must accept as we see it before our eyes,
men and women as we meet them in the real world, not as we apprehend them in the world of
faery.25 (Parsons 35) states James Joyce about the nature of literary works during his time.
Coming from a culturally complex country such as Ireland, Joyce found inspiration in the simple
world around him he transposes many of the issues of identity which characterize the society in
the form of leitmotifs, and the language he uses in his work is as diverse as the one in real-life
Dublin.

Inspiration found in a literary work written long before its time and used as a basis for the
structure of events in the novel is what makes the functional layer of Ulysses stand out from
other creative writings of the time.

With regard to the language in Ulysses, needless to say it is considered one of the greatest
displays of all time. About it, Ezra Pound writes 26: One reads Proust and thinks him very
accomplished; one reads H. J. and knows he is very accomplished; one begins Ulysses and
25 James Joyce in his paper Drama and Life read to the University College Literary
and Historical Society in 1900.
26 Ezra Pound in a letter in May, 1922.
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thinks, perhaps rightly, that Joyce is less so; that he is at any rate less gracile; and one considers
how excellently both James and Proust convey their atmosphere; yet the atmosphere of the
Gerty-Nausika episode with its echoes of vesper service is certainly conveyed, and conveyed
with a certitude and efficiency that neither James nor Proust have excelled. (Read 196) For
Joyce the numerous techniques are just a way of presenting modern life. The diversity,
complexity and anarchy of existence during the beginning of the twentieth century are
transposed directly into his art. When asked whether literature should be first and foremost
fiction or fact, he replies It should be lifein my opinion there are as many forms of art as there
are forms of life27( Parsons 43).
Language is, perhaps, what makes Ulysses a milestone in the world of literary creation.
Experimental, daring, complicated, hallucinating even, it is what intrigues and fascinates critics
and readership to this day. Ive put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the
professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and thats the only way of insuring
ones immortality(Gifford 2)James Joyce himself states with regard to his novel.
In his preoccupation with language Joyce leaves aside his characters. If Richardson in
Pilgrimage foregrounds Miriam and makes her not only center, but sole entity and receiver of
attention, Joyce slowly diffuses this attention as the story progresses. This is done in two ways:
first, by splitting the chapters into parts which he then assigns to different characters whose
presence in the novel alternates until the central juxtaposition (the meeting between Stephen
Dedalus and Leopold Bloom). Moreover, the narrative focus shifts rapidly countless times, a
technique which neither Richardson nor Woolf applies in their works. The second method which
Joyce uses is concentrating on language more than on anything else: If any single consciousness
dominates Ulysses it becomes that of Joyce himself, who far from effacing his authorial control
behind the thoughts and perceptions of his characters, demonstrated it with every change of style,
repetition of phrase or image, or symbolic parallel or juxtaposition. (Parsons 61).

27 Interview in Power, 1999.

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Alternating the focus from one character to the other and then steadily moving the
readers attention from characters to language, against the universal expectation for continuity
and denouement is what makes the level of actions in Ulysses innovative.
T.S. Eliot writes in his essay Ulysses, Order and Myth: The novel ended with Flaubert
and with James. It is, I think, because Mr. Joyce and Mr. Lewis, being in advance of their time,
felt a conscious or probably unconscious dissatisfaction with the form, that their novels are more
formless than those of a dozen clever writers who are unaware of its obsolescence. What Eliot
insinuates is, of course, not the idea that Joyces literary works have no form at all, but that they
break out from the prescribed pattern of the novel. Ulysses reaches out beyond its nature of
literary creation and explores further than any writing before or since: it combines the functional
structure of a known epic with outstandingly ordinary characters which become heroes of real
life, all wrapped in language in its most natural form, before it is even born. Looked at from a
narratorogical point of view, not only does it not abide by the rules stated in Barthes theory of
layers in a narrative, but it also differs greatly from modernist works which have been otherwise
considered similar. Breaking the patterns of language as well as the patterns of structure is what
makes Ulysses a truly fascinating read.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. General surveys, literary histories, broad area or thematic studies

Attridge, Derek. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.
Gifford, Don and Robert J. Seidman. Notes for James Joyces Ulysses. 2nd ed. California:
University of California Press, 1989.
Gilbert, Stuart. James Joyces Ulysses. A Study. New York: Vintage Books, 1955.
Maud, Ellman. The Nets of Modernism. Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and
Sigmund Freud. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Parsons, Deborah. Theorists of the Modernist Novel. James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia
Woolf. Oxford: Routledge, 2007
Sampson, George. The Concise History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1970.
Tindall, William York. A Readers Guide to James Joyce. New York: The Noonday Press, 1959.
2. Monographs, biographies, author studies

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Faragnoli, Nicholas A. and Michaek Patrick Gillespie. Critical Companion to James Joyce. A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006.
Pound, Ezra and James Joyce. The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pounds Essays
on Joyce. Ed. Forrest Read. New York: New Directions Books, ?
Watts, Cedric. Introduction. Ulysses. By James Joyce. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd,
2010.
3. Theoretical and methodological studies
Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. Routledge, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
Andrews, Gibson. Joces Revenge. History, Politics, and Aesthetics in Ulysses. New York:
Oxford University Press,2002.
Bal, Mieke. Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 2nd ed. Torono: University of
Toronto Press, 1999.
Barthes, Roland. Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives. Image, music, text. Ed.
Stephen Heath. UK: Fontana Press, 1977.
Brown, Richard. James Joyce and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Trans. Hausler-Greenfield, Patricia and
Monika Fludernik. Routledge, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
Litz, A. Watton. The Art of James Joyce. Method and Design in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
Milesi, Laurent. James Joyce and the Difference of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
McKenna, Bernard. James Joyces Ulysses. A Reference Guide. Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
2002.
Spoo, Robert. James Joyce and the Language of History. Dedaluss Nightmare. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994.
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