Ulysses Piece
“Ulysses is a mosaic of psychological recalls, topics of the day, Dublin landmarks, social, political, and philosophical concepts. Its tone changes with kaleidoscopic rapidity—from irony to pathos to ridicule to poetry. In its cubistic arrangement of contrasting planes and perspectives it is a perfect art form for the modern era. As an art form, it has been variously praised and attached; its content has never received the consideration it deserves…Ulysses marks an important stage in the development of the most accomplished writer of his century. It confronts the poetic and philosophical artist with the common man and the vulgar values of society and projects his vision toward the symbolic plane later attained in Finnigans Wake…Ulysses is a modern Hamlet; but it is a Hamlet without the last three acts.” (Kain, 1947, pp. 240-41)
James Joyce’s Ulysses is monolithic; it broke the rules of literature while inventing a voice, textuality, unheralded in modern verse and canon. In many ways, it is a canon unto itself, the beginning of a literary style, a postmodern prose that encouraged experimentation, revealing the hidden monologue beneath the surface of voice. Joyce’s perambulatory style and inner monologue allowed the reader an insider’s view of the thoughts and musings of its principal characters. Bloom’s ruminations on loss and cuckoldry, Stephen’s self-punishment for his mother’s death, and Molly’s fanciful discursion that ends the novel, encouraging one to begin reading again, the Yes, the affirmation of beginning again, anew.
“Ulysses is a mosaic of psychological recalls, topics of the day, Dublin landmarks, social, political, and philosophical concepts. Its tone changes with kaleidoscopic rapidity—from irony to pathos to ridicule to poetry. In its cubistic arrangement of contrasting planes and perspectives it is a perfect art form for the modern era. As an art form, it has been variously praised and attached; its content has never received the consideration it deserves…Ulysses marks an important stage in the development of the most accomplished writer of his century. It confronts the poetic and philosophical artist with the common man and the vulgar values of society and projects his vision toward the symbolic plane later attained in Finnigans Wake…Ulysses is a modern Hamlet; but it is a Hamlet without the last three acts.” (Kain, 1947, pp. 240-41)
James Joyce’s Ulysses is monolithic; it broke the rules of literature while inventing a voice, textuality, unheralded in modern verse and canon. In many ways, it is a canon unto itself, the beginning of a literary style, a postmodern prose that encouraged experimentation, revealing the hidden monologue beneath the surface of voice. Joyce’s perambulatory style and inner monologue allowed the reader an insider’s view of the thoughts and musings of its principal characters. Bloom’s ruminations on loss and cuckoldry, Stephen’s self-punishment for his mother’s death, and Molly’s fanciful discursion that ends the novel, encouraging one to begin reading again, the Yes, the affirmation of beginning again, anew.
Ulysses was published on Joyce’s fortieth birthday, February 2 1922, in Paris to much acclaim and moralistic denounce. Its publication history alone makes for a most interesting book, the trials and censure of a literary monument that was both despised and lauded as a work of genius. Joyce’s Ulysses is responsible for spawning an entire literary criticism, a sweatshop of academic study and denouement. The novel begins with the word Stately and ends with the affirmation, Yes. What lies in between is a testament to Joyce’s literary genius and creativity. In many ways Ulysses is a book about a book, an exegeses on writing, remembering, forgetting and the solipsistic loneliness of modern man. It describes with surgical precision the inner workings of each character’s thoughts, their inability to communicate outside of themselves, in a solitude wrought with indecision, angst, fear and detachment from the outer world. In many ways, Ulysses foreshadowed the Babel of in-communication that has become the state of postmodernism.
