ClassicNote on Ulysses
The
Context of James Joyce's Ulysses
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Ulysses, a Modernist reconstruction of Homer's epic The Odyssey, was
James Joyce's first epic-length novel. The Irish writer had
already published a collection of short stories entitled
Dubliners, as well as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
the semi-autobiographical novella, whose protagonist, Stephen
Dedalus, reappears in Ulysses. Immediately hailed as a work of
genius, Ulysses is still considered to be the greatest of
Joyce's literary accomplishments and his first two works
anticipated what was to come in Ulysses. The novel was written
over the span of several years, during which Joyce continued to
live in self-imposed exile from his native Ireland. Ulysses was
published in Paris in the year of 1922--the same year in which
T. S. Eliot published his widely regarded poem, "The Waste
Land."
Within English literature, the "Modernist" tradition includes
most of the British and American literary figures writing
between the two world wars, and James Joyce is considered among
the likes of T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf: standard-bearers
who initiated the Modernist "revolution" against the Victorian
"excesses of civilization." Even today, Ulysses is widely
regarded as the most "revolutionary" literary efforts of the
twentieth century if only for Joyce's "stream of consciousness"
technique. In his efforts to create a modern hero, Joyce
returned to classical myth only to deconstruct a Greek warrior
into a parody of the "Wandering Jew." Joyce's hero, Leopold
Bloom, must suffer the emotional traumas of betrayal and loss,
while combating the anti-Semitism of 1904 Dublin. In place of
Greek stoicism and power, Joyce set a flawed and endearing human
being. And while Homer's The Odyssey only touched upon "epic,"
dignified themes, Joyce devoted considerably detailed passages
to the most banal and taboo human activities: gluttony,
defecation, urination, dementia, masturbation, voyeurism,
alcoholism, sado-masochism and coprophilia-and most of these
depictions included the hero, Bloom.
Joyce saw Ulysses as the confluence of his two previous
works. From Dubliners, Joyce borrowed the fatalistic and
naturalistic depictions of a gritty, urban center. Ulysses is
impressive for its geography alone, charting almost twenty hours
of Dublin's street wandering, "bar-hopping" and marine commerce.
Even though Joyce took alternate residences in Switzerland,
Italy and France, he was able to paint Dublin from his almost
perfect memory. While Leopold Bloom is the major character of
the work, Joyce spends considerable time focusing on Stephen
Dedalus, the protagonist of his first work. It is through
Stephen, that Joyce is able to debate the contentious religious
and political issues that dominated the novella. Unsurprisingly,
Joyce's portrays Dublin as the semi-complicit victim of
Britain's aggression and the Roman Catholic Church's oppression.
Joyce continues his argument as a non-conformist, that the Roman
Catholic Church's structure facilitated corruption and more
generally contributed to the alienation and rot of the human
soul as opposed to its uplift.
At the same time, the Irish population was governed by the
British and kept under close watch. The British occupying force
humiliated Irish patriots, and this permanent military presence
was one of the principal obstacles on the path towards Irish
"Home Rule." Despite Joyce's resentment towards Britain's
colonial outlook, his most dramatic political evolution since
Portrait, is his rejection of Ireland's nascent nationalist
fervor. The patriots and zealots of Ulysses are invariably
buffoons or villains. Frequently they are drunk, and their
national agendas usually feature misogynist and anti-Semitic
corollaries. Most notably, Joyce satirizes the campaigned
"Renaissance" of the Irish language and we should remember that
Ulysses accomplished the double act of establishing Joyce as the
premier stylist of the English language while giving Ireland a
national bard and epic.
But Ulysses' ascension into the literary canon was not a
simple one even though the novel sold well in Paris. Critics
heralded Joyce's genius and wit, though the book's incredible
opacity, numerous deceptions and tedious allusions were a source
of contention. In Ulysses, Joyce attempted to replicate the
thoughts and activities of genuine human beings, but Joyce's
"outhouse humor" even drew criticism from literary familiars
like Virginia Woolf. The allegedly "pornographic" novel was
immediately banned in the United Kingdom as well as the United
States. The frank sexuality of the "Penelope" episode and
Bloom's sado-masochistic "hallucinations" in the "Circe" chapter
elicited the strongest reactions. Despite the moral indignation,
Ulysses was a smuggled commodity and Joyce's literary stature
rose considerably among literary communities on both sides of
the Atlantic. Nonetheless, it was well over a decade before a
Random House court victory initiated the first American
publications of the novel, which became available in Britain two
years later. |