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Questions tagged [ulysses]

For questions about James Joyce's 1922 modernist novel "Ulysses". Use this with the [james-joyce] tag.

4 votes
1 answer
187 views

Is there any deeper reason as to why Joyce chose the Latin name for Odysseus when he titled Ulysses?

I only learned recently that Ulysses is the Latin version of the Greek name Odysseus. It made me wonder why Joyce chose it over the Greek for his novel Ulysses. Apparently there's a very prosaic ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Has there ever been a stage production of Chapter 15 of Ulysses?

Chapter 15 of Ulysses, "Circe" is written in the form of a play script, complete with stage directions. When I first read it, I idly wondered whether or not anyone had ever attempted to ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
98 views

What is Leopold doing in the chapter Aeolus in Ulysses?

In Aeolus, Leopold is in a newspaper office to do something. I've never quite understood what that is. He is not a reporter. He asks someone to cut out an ad, so that he can run it by the printers. ...
freebird's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
1k views

Who is “our greatest living phonetic expert” in “Ulysses”?

In chapter 12 of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the narrator describes an “exhibition of cynanthropy” which comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert (...
Kevin Troy's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
117 views

What is the reference to the sixth month of pregnancy in Ulysses?

In the annotations in Penguin's Ulysses: Annotated Student Edition, Kiberd says that "the six month of pregnancy" beings in the paragraph "Our worthy acquaintance, Mr Malachi Mulligan, ...
Ell's user avatar
  • 191
0 votes
0 answers
85 views

Alma's annotations to Chapter 14 of Ulysses

(If this question does not fit this site, let me know and I'll delete it). I'm considering buying the "Annotated Edition" of Ulysses published by Alma Classics. I was wondering about the ...
Ell's user avatar
  • 191
3 votes
0 answers
462 views

Annotations to Ulysses that help understand its sentences literally?

I read Ulysses once, and I used the following sources for annotations: The annotations at the end of Penguin's Ulysses: Annotated Student Edition, by Declan Kiberd Gifford's Ulysses annotated The ...
Ell's user avatar
  • 191
2 votes
1 answer
353 views

Does Joyce, in Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, link the sound form "hoe" to "whore"?

Does Joyce, in Finnegans Wake or Ulysses, link the sound form "hoe" to "whore", as in the current day "ho"? For example, is it probable that Joyce intended the (additional) modern day pun in the ...
fundagain's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
793 views

Where and how did James Joyce condemn Hamlet as a failure?

Earlier this year, someone asked Why did T.S. Eliot make a statement that 'Coriolanus' was Shakespeare's masterpiece and that 'Hamlet' was an artistic failure? If the Wikipedia article about William ...
Tsundoku's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
494 views

How do we know that Bloom was never circumcised?

Everyone knows that Bloom was not circumcised (just ask Google). But how do we know this? Hugh Kenner claims it is (371/373). I have read these pages over and over, but don't see it? Despite the ...
fundagain's user avatar
  • 1,998
12 votes
1 answer
503 views

In Ulysses, why does Stephen finally decide not to stay with Bloom?

Ulysses is such a well-commented book that it's hard to find questions which have not been widely explored already. However, there's a simple aspect of character motivation I've been unable to clarify....
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
859 views

Is the impenetrability of Chapter 14 of Ulysses deliberate, or a consequence of its stylistic pastiches?

Chapter 14 of Joyce's Ulysses, The Oxen of the Sun, frequently changes writing styles as it unfolds. Joyce was attempting to mimic the development of the English language, from its Latin roots through ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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14 votes
4 answers
1k views

What is the purpose of all the lists in chapter 12 of Joyce's Ulysses?

Chapter 12 of James Joyce's Ulysses, Cyclops, consists mostly of a first-person comic narrative of men drinking in a pub. The conversation is frequently interrupted, however, by a number of deadpan ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
5k views

What does Stephen Dedalus mean: "History is the nightmare from which I’m trying to awake”?

Source: How to Read Novels Like a Professor (2008) by Thomas C. Foster. p. 247 Middle. �� The big, often very uncomfortable, ideas run rampant in those disquieting categories, “minority” and “...
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5 votes
1 answer
445 views

Why do we see so little mention of Leopold Bloom's social isolation in his internal monologue?

Leopold Bloom is the primary protagonist of Joyce's novel Ulysses. Throughout the novel, we are treated to an extensive transcription of his thoughts and feelings via the stream of consciousness ...
Matt Thrower's user avatar
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