Seminar 3: James Joyce's Ulysses

In discussing Ulysses, Chapter 15 (Circe) in particular, we came up these main points:

James Joyce uses lots of description and imagery as well as a stream of consciousness approach to depict the everyday life of Leonard Bloom

the novel is often dream-like and jumps between the real world and Bloom’s thoughts a lot, which we all found very confusing. Often it is hallucinations that are being described, but this is not obvious because of the Modernist style that it has been written in.

The whole book is about what happened in one day of Leonard’s life in Ireland.

There are a lot of different languages, such as English, Irish and Greek, mixed in together and lots of Irish idioms which make the book even more difficult to follow.

Joyce also liked to play with words a lot.

Many parts of it pick up on Freudian ideas of the unconscious, the Id the Ego and the Superego as well as defense mechanisms and the importance of both mother and father figures in a person’s mental state.

The root of Leonard’s problems is suggested to be the lack of sex in his marriage.

It depicts a normal person on a normal day, which is partly what makes it difficult to understand because we all think in different patters, but which also can be applied to everyone. This is very much in keeping with modernist work at the time in thinking about how the human mind works.

It has been suggested that Stephen is trying to find a paternal role model in his life and that his issues stem from his lack of a father figure, reflecting Freud’s emphasis on parent-child relationships.

In one part, Bloom is shown to have 8 babies, which are all perfect, with clothes and positions of high authority in society from birth, which can be seen as reflecting the ideals in life at the time and the expectations the different parts of society. It could also be interpreted as Bloom striving for perfection. This few paragraphs is a good example of how Joyce blurred lines, in this case between the midwife delivering his babies and the suggestion of a sexual encounter.

Leonard often tries to behave like a normal member of the public, for example in the way that he acts with the prostitutes (pretending to be setting up a hostel for them as an excuse to be there?). This can be seen as showing his ego at work, and social expectations as well because he doesn’t want people to know that he has been there. This is reflective of the ideas of public and private lives that are picked up in much other literature such as Howard’s End by E.M. Forster and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by R.L. Stevenson.

Throughout the book, the Roman Catholic Church is attacked. Especially in the delusion in which Leonard is celebrated and inaugurated in which the pomp and ceremony is described with a mocking hyperbole. Also, accusations are hurled at priests at one point.

At many points Joyce mixes between talking about Jews and Roman Catholics, which can be quite confusing.

There is also much criticism of Ireland itself and it must be remembered that when Joyce was writing Ulysses, he had not been living in Ireland for 20 or so years and so was quite detached. Ireland is portrayed as seedy and many of the court hallucinations show it to be corrupt and fickle. It is not an overly positive view, therefore, and only really shows a snapshot; we only see what Leonard sees.

Finally, we concluded that Ulysses set the style for other Modernist literature and tackles many issues which makes it a “classic” and a very important book.