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Bloom by Joyce[Up: Joyce] [JAJportal] [Prior- Portrait] [Robot Wisdom Weblog]
"a watershed in Web culture" Irish Times
Bloom by Joyce
Advanced notes (now multipage): Thousands of links to music, images, and etexts
New: hyperlinked summary; Homeric parallels
Although Joyce only began writing Ulysses in 1914, he had been laying the plans for it since 1906. His intention was to create a fictional Everyman-- Leopold Bloom-- to rival the classical figure of Homer's Odysseus (aka Ulysses) [Odyssey resources], which Joyce admired as the most well-rounded portrait of a human in literature. But he took the tribute a step further by making Bloom's adventures parallel Ulysses's, on a much smaller scale.
The action takes place in 18 chapters spaced approximately one hour apart, starting at 8:00am on Thursday 16 June 1904, and ending in the early hours of June 17. (This date is celebrated by Joyceans as Bloomsday.)
The central parallel to Homer is that Bloom's wife Molly-- like Penelope in Homer-- is being courted by a suitor, the dashing Blazes Boylan. In order to win her back, Bloom must negotiate twelve trials-- his Odyssey.
"It is an epic of two races (Israelite - Irish) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story (storiella) of a day (life). ...It is also a sort of encyclopedia. My intention is to transpose the myth sub specie temporis nostri. Each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the whole) should not only condition but even create its own technique. Each adventure is so to say one person although it is composed of persons-- as Aquinas relates of the angelic hosts." 20 September 1920 (original in Italian, for Linati) [more quotes]
Nabokov's version of this map (handdrawn, very sketchy) [zoomed Nabokov]; and the Groden site's (poorly scanned) [zoomed Groden]; Homeric map
The following summary is mirrored in a slightly different form (and minus the links) at the Irish Times Bloomsday site.
Like Homer's Odyssey, the first few chapters of Joyce's Ulysses are focused on Telemachus. [summary of Homer], [bio of T]
Summary; ClassicNotes
Essay on SD as autobiography
![[1904]](/web/20120622214715im_/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/img/dedalus.jpg)
![[Stately plump...]](/web/20120622214715/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/img/philly.gif){kind=small}
Odysseus's son Telemachus is represented in Ulysses by Stephen Dedalus, whose background readers should remember from Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, [etext] based very closely on Joyce's own life [detailed comparison]. Stephen is presumably searching for a substitute for his own reprobate father Simon.
From Bloom's perspective, the unwelcome Homeric suitor of 16 June is Blazes Boylan, but as Stephen's nemesis we're offered one of the most dynamic portraits in literature: Malachi "Buck" Mulligan, student of medicine, based on Oliver St. John Gogarty [bio].
In reality, for a single week in September 1904, Joyce and Gogarty had shared the Martello tower in Sandycove [pix]. But for his fictional purposes, Joyce has re-dated these memories to June, and the book opens with Mulligan shaving atop the tower, joking exuberantly and blasphemously with sullen Stephen.
Stephen complains about a guest who's disturbed their sleep, but what's really bothering him is a callous comment Mulligan once made about Stephen's mother's death, now a full year past but with his grief still unreconciled.
Mulligan seems unsatisfactorily contrite, and Stephen signals his decision to break off their friendship by deflating Mulligan's game of conning money out of the guest, the enthusiast Haines. By the time Stephen leaves for work, he's resolved not to return that night (though this resolve may waver during the day).
In 'real life', the last straw that sent Joyce off into lifelong exile from Ireland occurred on the morning of 15 September 1904. Something happened between Joyce and Gogarty, who had been lending Joyce money all year and had, for the preceding week, been Joyce's host at the Tower.
Joyce's later disdain for Gogarty led their acquaintances to expect that Joyce's telling of this Tower scene would be a savage attack on Gogarty, and it surely is somehow a turningpoint for their relationship... but what exactly the crux of the matter is, is ambiguous! (Gogarty claimed it involved horseplay with a gun, but there's no other evidence for this.)
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies and part two
Homeric parallels: [advanced], [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, online game (Charles Lamb's edition for children was the one Joyce grew up with. It omits the Telemachia, however.)
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Pix: manuscript, stairs, mailboat, livingroom, dancecard, hat, 40-ft
Etexts: Fergus, Agenbite, Joking Jesus
Tower pix (for interiors see Advanced notes): [multi-view imagemap], [museum page] [pix], old pic, handsome pic, [maps], [satellite pic], aerial pic (300k)
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Watching Stephen with his students at a small school in Dalkey, we see a sensitive young man who has the makings of a good and kindly teacher, but he's uncomfortable with this job (which Joyce had held briefly in June). He speaks respectfully to the director of the school as he gets his wages, but knows with certainty that this man (paralleling Homer's Nestor) has nothing to teach him.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text, ditto; summary; ditto, ditto, illustrated
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: library, spoon, tram
Song: Rocky Road
Aerial pic of region (250k) [index of pics]
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Over the first two chapters, we heard more and more of Stephen's allusive, poetic, and extremely difficult inner voice. In ch3 we hear almost nothing else, but if one persists (or skips ahead) ch4 will return to a far simpler style, for Bloom.
Stephen's thoughts as he walks northward along Sandymount Strand wrestle the most obscure questions of metaphysics and religion, framed in personal memories that dwell especially on his daring adventures in Paris just before his mother's death.
The Homeric episode of Proteus is about wrestling with a god who takes many shapes, and one Joycean parallel is a dog on the beach who changes, via Stephen's metaphors, into a protean sequence of wild creatures.
Finally, he thinks of some lines for a poem, and then lies back on some rocks, and 'frigs' (masturbates, in an ambiguous sequence).
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
An early draft of Proteus
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; summary; ditto, ditto, illustrated
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Pix: Ringsend
Etexts: Wilde, Pater, dental ad
Pic of Sandymount strand, ditto
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New: Bloom bio
ClassicNotes: 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15
As Ulysses was imprisoned by Calypso, so Leopold Bloom has accepted his role as Molly's servant, making the best of the pleasures he's offered, and keeping alive his rich, fallible imagination. He putters in the kitchen, steps round the corner to the butcher's, brings Molly up her breakfast, reads a letter from their daughter Milly (who's working for a photographer in Mullingar), and finally visits the outhouse, where he has a fantasy about becoming a published author.
Bloom has perhaps sent 15yo Milly away, aware that Molly is about to undertake an affair with Boylan, who's organizing a concert tour with Molly as the leading singer.
Bloom's movements in this chapter are synchronised with Stephen's in Chapter One via a small cloud seen by each.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase, Bullfinch's; summary; ditto, ditto, illustrated1 and 2, ditto, psychology, ditto, map, [essay], song, myth
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: LB by JAJ, chamberpot
Songs: Seaside Girls, La ci darem, Love's old sweet song
Fansite: Sandow
Eccles diagrams
Pic of #7 Eccles, [door], [map]
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; MOO, MOO2, MOO3; Pomona, Torino, Greensboro
RealAudio of excerpt
As Stephen is teaching his students, Bloom is wandering towards the center of Dublin, sneaking in a visit to a post office where he's been carrying on an clandestine postal romance with one 'Martha Clifford', using the pseudonym Henry Flower. (The real identity of MC has been a longstanding puzzle that seems now to have been solved by Patrick Hogan [riddles].)
Homer's tranquilised lotus-land is continually being evoked by Bloom's mental imagery of eunuchs and opiates and religions (and lazy games of cricket!). He observes the baffling rituals in a Catholic church [pic]. And his casual words "...throw it away" to a race-fan become a lucky tip on the outsider Throwaway, who won the Gold Cup race on Bloomsday in 1904. This 'tip' also wends its way around the city, leading to various misunderstandings and frustrations.
This chapter explores excesses of religiosity, where ch14 (Oxen of the Sun) will explore excesses of irreligiosity.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary; ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, questions
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: jauntingcar, Plumtree
Etext: cabmen
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; MOO, MOO2; Pomona, synopsis, Greensboro
Analysis of letters of Martha and Milly
We next join the funeral of Paddy Dignam, with Bloom and Simon Dedalus sharing a carriage to the cemetery. Bloom's Jewish parentage makes him an outsider to the Catholics in the cab, and the conversation keeps taking awkward turns. At the cemetery, Bloom's meditations on human decay are unsentimental to a grotesque degree.
And the mysterious Man in the Macintosh makes his first appearance of the day, among the mourners [riddles].
This chapter shows realism in excess, where ch13 (Nausikaa) shows sentimentality in excess.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, questions, terminology, myth
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: pillar
Glasnevin cemetery website
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; MOO, MOO2; Pomona, Greensboro
Bloom's path crosses Stephen's (again without meeting) at a newspaper office, where Bloom is trying to close an ad sale, and Stephen is delivering a letter to the editor for his employer.
In keeping with Homer's god of the wind, most of the metaphors are wind-related, and everyone in the chapter is inflated with rhetoric. (Joyce broke up the chapter with the distinctive newspaper-style headlines just before publication. Without them, the style of the chapter would seem much less radical, though it still embodies an enormous inventory of rhetorical devices.)
Stephen finally improvises a comic story [etext] for the newsmen, which unfortunately falls pretty flat.
This chapter shows rhetoric under the constraint of censorship, where ch12 (Cyclops) shows rhetoric unconstrained.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, questions, winds
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Song: M'appari
[map]; list of rhetorical figures
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; MOO; Pomona, Greensboro, Staley
Reference: Rhetorical forms, ditto
RealAudio of excerpt from Russian translation
Here at the low point of his day, Bloom's memories dwell on the disasters of his past. He drops the paper 'throwaway' off O'Connell bridge [live webcam]. (In the cam view, Bloom would be crossing the bridge coming towards us, on the side we see.) He meets an old girlfriend, Josie Breen, whose husband is making a spectacle of himself over a prank postcard that reads, mysteriously, "UP". The recurring motif of pins echoes the Lestrygonians' cannibal-teeth in Homer.
This chapter's pessimism is balanced by the optimism of ch11 (Sirens).
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: Glencree
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Pomona, Torino; gluttony, Greensboro, Eberly
Chapter Nine belongs to Stephen, with Bloom making only a cameo. In an office at the National Library, Stephen is playing literary detective for an audience of Dublin literati. He builds a witty argument that 'Hamlet' reflects Shakespeare's rage at being cuckolded... but the literati are unappreciative, and Mulligan arrives suddenly to steal the limelight, breaking whatever spell Stephen might have woven.
Joyce begins to introduce some radical stylistic experiments here, that will grow more bizarre through much of the last half of the book: "He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor."
In the original scheme of the book, this chapter was to be a central turningpoint, eleventh out of 21 or ninth out of 17. (Recently I've become convinced that before that, it was the missing second-of-four in the Telemachia, where Telemachus pleads to the Ithacans.)
In Joyce's theory, Scylla (the rocky cliff with the monster) is represented by hard-hearted rural Stratford rationalism, Charybdis (the whirlpool) by soft-headed urban London/Dublin mysticism.
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies; Hamlet-for-dummies
Resources on Joyce's Shakespeare
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, questions, myth
Advanced notes (outline of debate, character profiles, music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: Old pic of library interior
Etexts: Wilde on WH
Profiles: Russell (AE), Eglinton
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Pomona, bilingual Japanese, Greensboro
![[map]](/web/20120622214715im_/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/wrocks/wr327.gif.pagespeed.ce.3XeTTFpnos.gif)
[Key, notes, zoom, and animation]
Chapter Ten was a late addition to Joyce's plan, not based on any Homeric adventure. It offers 19 subsections showing 19 vignettes of Dubliners walking after lunch, told from their 19 different points of view (although the style is otherwise less adventurous than in Scylla). Most of these subsections contain one or more 'intrusions' from other sections, showing how things are happening simultaneously.
All the characters' paths interweave, unified by the twin paths of Father Conmee and the Viceregal Cavalcade (Church and State). There may be a certain amount of Dublin political business being transacted, in ways that would be invisible to outsiders.
Joyce worked out the timings with great care, from his exile in Zurich, and the paths are retraced every June 16 in Dublin by enthusiasts [Bloomsday info].
Chapter text [re-arranged chronologically]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Wandering Rocks entry in Perseus encyclopedia (no Homeric episode)
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
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Hypermedia exploration of Wandering Rocks; 'intrusions'
Paralleling Ulysses' adventure with the Sirens, the barmaids and singers of Chapter Eleven tempt Bloom with illusions of heaven as surely as his depressed thoughts in Lestrygonians tempted him to despair. Dining at the Ormond Hotel, he hears Simon Dedalus singing "Martha" [full RealAudio of Caruso's 1906 Italian rendition] as he composes a reply to Martha Clifford, taking this adultery one critical step further by enclosing a money order.
Joyce saw this chapter as an exhaustive inventory of musical idioms, and once showed Frank Budgen how to dance to its rhythms!
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, pic, questions, fanpage, Kafka, myth
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Pomona, Torino, Greensboro, French
hypermedia edition [main analysis]
setting: Berio
Bloom arrives early for a scheduled rendezvous to resolve Dignam's financial affairs, and ends up in an unfriendly pub where the gossip quickly turns rancorous. The Cyclops here is represented by the Citizen, an ill-tempered nationalist who believes Bloom has secretly won a bundle on Throwaway. Bloom in turn is roused to unaccustomed anger before being put to flight.
The events are presented through the eyes of an obnoxious bystander, 'The Nameless One', retelling the story several hours later in a different pub, along with 33 interpolated literary parodies that exaggerate everything to heroic proportions.
The rhetoric of 'Cyclops' counterbalances that of Eolus (ch7), with this episode showing exaggeration where Eolus showed self-censorship, or deflation of the successful.
Chapter text [onepage w/typos]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Part of a draft
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; Hooker's translation; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, pic, pic, questions, game, myth
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
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A page of the manuscript, staring with 12.1213, "thrones of alabaster":
Chapter Thirteen so offended the censors in 1920 that it brought an end to the serialization of Ulysses in the "Little Review" [info]. Most of the narrative is in the cliche-ridden voice of a teenaged girl on the strand, Gerty MacDowell, who flirts with Bloom in a slowly escalating rhythm that climaxes orgasmically, but then switches abruptly to Bloom's usual inner monologue, meditating now on the mystical properties of scent and sex.
The gross realism of Hades (ch6) is balanced by the sentimental idealism of this chapter. Joyce said more than once that the flirtation was all in Bloom's imagination, but it leaves a real wet spot on his shirt. (He's very near where Stephen may have frigged some ten hours earlier.) As darkness falls, he starts to write a puzzling message to Gerty in the sand "I AM A..." or just "I AM..." [riddles], but then drifts into a nap.
Gerty's age may even be getting younger and younger as the chapter progresses. [more]
Chapter text
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase, Bullfinch; summary, ditto, ditto, Torino, illustrated1 and 2 and 3, map
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: Martin Harvey
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Pomona, Greensboro
Chapter Fourteen is the most difficult in the book, because it recapitulates the entire history of the English language, telling of Bloom's arrival at a maternity hospital (in Chaucer's English), and then following him into a drunken party of medical students in there, with the language slowly mutating through Defoe to Sterne to Gibbon to Carlyle.
Bloom has stopped in to visit an acquaintance, first flirting briefly with Nurse Callan, and finally meeting Stephen, who is there looking for Mulligan. The medicals are trying to outdo each other with grotesqueries. Mulligan arrives with Alec Bannon, a friend who's interrupted his stay in Mullingar and hurried back to Dublin to buy a condom, presumably because Bloom's daughter Milly has agreed to a sexual liaison.
And it may well be Bloom who finally supplies this [more], but to be sure will require solving the riddle of the last few pages, a babble of unassigned voices using obscure forms of slang [more]: "Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah."
As Lotus-eaters (ch5) explored the dangers of being hypnotised by religion, Oxen exposes the dangers of being numbed by irreligion. The unhappy memories that Bloom had been suppressing in Lestrygonians now seem to attack him from outside, projecting his post-frig paranoia into the casual words of the medicals.
Chapter text [onepage w/typos]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Shortened version of the chapter, created to accompany a RealAudio reading that's no longer on the Web
Homeric parallels: [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated, map, myth
NEW (Jun 2002): detailed annotations
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: hospital
130k close-reading of the end of Oxen
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Paul Tang; Pomona, Greensboro, Anglo-Saxon, Schwaber
Reference: A conventional history of English prose styles
At the end of Oxen, Stephen and Lynch head off to the red light district via the train station, and Bloom decides to follow, concerned for Simon's prodigal son. A mysterious altercation takes place at the station, unseen by the reader, between Stephen and Mulligan, who was apparently trying to sneak back to the tower without him.
Chapter Fifteen opens with Bloom arriving in 'Nighttown', trying to catch up with Stephen but getting caught up in his own guilts and lusts, which appear as a riot of hallucinations, all presented in the style of a stageplay's script.
The sound of a piano leads Bloom to Bella Cohen's brothel, where he resists various magical attacks and confronts his own most perverse desires, symbolically freeing himself from the snares of Calypso.
Stephen also confronts the haunting spectre of his mother, striking out with his walking stick and shattering a lampglobe. Bloom settles Stephen's accounts and follows him out to the street, where he's begun arguing with two soldiers, one of whom knocks Stephen unconscious.
This is apparently based on an incident from Joyce's last weeks in Dublin, when a friend of his father's, Alfred Hunter, rescued Joyce from a dustup and brought him home. Joyce layers upon this his belief that his later eyeproblems started while he was lying drunk in the streets of Rome... so as Bloom stands watch over Stephen, a malignant dumbshow image of Death makes a try at stealing Stephen away.
Chapter text [onepage w/typos] [condensed]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
An early draft of Circe
Homeric parallels: [advanced] [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, ditto, illustrated, ditto, map, pic, questions, fansite, moly, myth, poncy book review
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: c1920?, black fan
Songs: The Holy City
70k of corrections to Gifford's annotations to Circe; 470k close-reading of the oldest draft of Circe
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Blamires; Gilbert; Sultan; Analysis; Pomona, Torino; Stack; Blamires; Masonic refs, Greensboro, sexuality
Hypermedia exploration of Circe
1970 cast
Summary; ClassicNotes
This antepenultimate chapter is a sort of shaggy-dog story of Bloom's attempts to build rapport with the barely-revived Stephen, in an allnight greasy-coffeespoon. A rebarbative old salt called Murphy spins some tall tales, and Stephen finally agrees to come home with Bloom. The style is a maze of risible rhetorical missteps.
Chapter text [onepage w/typos]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [advanced] [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated and 2 and 3 and 4, ditto, map
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
360 degree Quicktime VR tour; [map]
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Analysis; Pomona, Torino, cabbies', Greensboro
Their walk home is rich with smalltalk. Bloom has to break into his own house because he's forgotten the key. The house is full of signs of Blazes' presence, leaving Bloom feeling dislocated, and even suicidal. He makes cocoa for Stephen and they chat some more, about Judaism especially. Stephen declines Bloom's offer to spend the night, and they urinate together in the back garden before Bloom sees Stephen off in the pre-dawn.
Returning to the house, Bloom bangs his head on the newly rearranged sideboard in his livingroom. He sees that his bookshelf has been ransacked, and wonders with panic whether his drawer of secrets has been explored. To calm himself, he tries a familiar mental exercise of picturing his dream retirement-cottage, then when this fails, imagining fleeing Molly, Dublin, Ireland, Earth... but finally accepts that even if he's been dishonored, still life goes on.
Molly wakes as he readies for bed, and he relates a slightly censored version of his day. (It appears that many of the 'facts' presented in Ithaca's encyclopedic, apparently objective style are equally distorted by Bloom's normal egoism.)
Chapter text [onepage w/typos]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Homeric parallels: [advanced] [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, illustrated and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5, pix, map, [essay]
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Eccles diagrams
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
Analysis; Pomona, Torino, Greensboro
Having confronted his demons in Nighttown, Bloom has apparently freed himself from the dominance of Calypso, for the last chapter opens with Molly pondering his demand that she serve him tomorrow's breakfast in bed. This chapter is notorious for its near-total lack of punctuation (making it very difficult to know whom Molly is referring to when she uses 'he' or 'she'), as well as for its uncensored exploration of woman's sexuality.
In a nonviolent parallel to Odysseus's battle with the suitors, Molly's thoughts revolve around Bloom's virtues and vices compared to the other men she might have chosen, concluding finally (as she, too, frigs) that he's not so bad as some.
Among the many details that emerge, we get glimpses of what's probably the real sequence of Bloom's decline since 1894, a puzzle I trust will eventually be convincingly worked out.
Chapter text [reformatted]
The Ulysses-for-Dummies very very short version; Homer-for-dummies
Selected dirty parts of Penelope; ditto
Homeric parallels: [advanced] [resources] comparison, Homer's text; Lamb's paraphrase; summary, ditto, ditto, Torino, illustrated and 2 and 3; game, poncy book review, ditto, virtue, essay, essay
Advanced notes (music samples, images, maps, and etexts)
Pix: Aristocrats Masterpiece
Maps: Gibraltar
Groden: setting, questions, schema, Homer, motifs
More on Ulysses riddles
More on Ulysses leitmotifs
New: Sorting out the clocktime
List of themes
150k of Joyce's notes for Ulysses
Ulysses for Dummies (very short, illustrated)
Another overview and another and another and another and another and another, multipage, onepage, short, H2G2, Spanish-language, MS Word format, and some insights
Reading group archives
EM Forster's views; JC Oates; Enda Duffy's; V Woolf's
Review of Rose edition
Kidd on the Joyce mafia [passim]
New: year 1904, Dublin prices, violent death in U
The 1986 'corrected' edition of Ulysses by Hans Gabler is acknowledged to have corrected about 2000 typos and other errors in previous editions, but John Kidd has charged that another 2000 unjustified changes were also introduced. (The bulk of this case is presented in The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America, December 1988.)
Kidd's own edition of Ulysses has been repeatedly delayed, and I've recently determined that Kidd's detectivework on Chapter One is just as flawed as Gabler's...
A primer on editing complex texts, especially Ulysses
Some notes on Kidd vs Gabler vs Barger
An overview of Ulysses (etc) notes and drafts
Joyce circulated the following schema for Ulysses, at first only privately but then finally allowing Gilbert to publish it. It probably only scratches the surface of the "oversystematizing" Joyce confessed to.
![[Custom map]](/web/20120622214715im_/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/img/umapbig.gif)
![[Map]](/web/20120622214715im_/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/img/ucore.gif)
scene hr clrs organ art technic symbol
01 TELEMACHUS Tower 08 GDWH --- theology narrative-young heir
02 NESTOR School 09 BNCH --- history catechism-personal horse
03 PROTEUS Strand 10 BLGN --- philology monolog-male tide
04 CALYPSO House 08 OR kidney mythol/econ narrative-mature nymph
05 LOTUS-EATR Bath 09 BN skin chem/botany narcissism eucharist
06 HADES Graveyard 11 BKWH heart religion incubism caretaker
07 EOLUS Newspaper 12 RD lungs rhetoric enthymemic editor
08 LESTRYGONI Lunch 13 BD esoph architect peristalsis constables
09 SCYLLA&CHR; Library 14 -- brain literature dialectic Stratford/London
10 WANDERINGR Streets 15 RB blood mechanics labyrinth citizens
11 SIRENS Concertrm.16 CL ear music fuga per canonem barmaids
12 CYCLOPS Tavern 17 GN muscle surgery/pol gigantism fenian
13 NAUSIKAA Rocks 20 GYBL eye/ns painting de/tumescence virgin
14 OXENofSUN Hospital 22 WH womb medicine embryonic develpm. mothers
15 CIRCE Brothel 23 VI leg/skl dance hallucination whore
16 EUMEUS Shelter 00 nerves navigation narrative-old sailors
17 ITHACA House 01 STMK skeltn science catechism-impers. comets
18 PENELOPE Bed zz STMK fat ---- monolog-female earth
*Colors: GolD WHite BrowN CHestnut BLue GreeN ORange BlacK ReD
BlooD RainBow CoraL GreY VIolet STarry MilKy (no yellow!?)
Joyce's English spellings for the chapter 'titles' are mostly entirely unambiguous, but universally ignored by Joyceans: Telemachia, Eolus, Nausikaa, Eumeus, Ithaca. Lotus-eaters was sometimes Lotuseaters or Lotus eaters, Charybdis was sometimes Carybdis.
Here's a full transcript
[this section has been vastly expanded here]
Joyce:
main :
fast portal :
portal
major: FW :
Pomes :
U :
PoA :
Ex :
Dub :
SH :
CM :
CM05 :
CM04
minor:
Burner :
[Defoe] :
[Office] :
PoA04 :
Epiph :
Mang :
Rab
bio:
timeline :
1898-1904 :
[Trieste] :
eyesight :
schools :
Augusta
vocation:
reading :
tastes :
publishers :
craft :
symmetry
people:
1898-1904 gossip :
1881 gossip :
Nora :
Lucia :
Gogarty :
Byrne :
friends :
siblings :
Stannie
maps:
Dublin :
Leinster :
Ireland :
Europe :
Paris :
Ulysses
images:
directory :
[Ruch]
motifs:
ontology :
waves :
lies :
wanking :
MonaLisa :
murder
Irish lit:
timeline :
100poems :
Ireland :
newspapers :
gossip :
Yeats :
MaudG :
AE :
the Household :
Theosophy :
Eglinton :
Ideals
classics:
Shakespeare :
Dante :
Pre-Raphaelites :
Homer :
Patrick
industry:
Bloomsday :
[movies] :
Ellmann :
Rose :
genetics :
NewGame
website: account :
theory :
early :
old links :
slow-portal
fast-portal
[Up: Ulysses]
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