Radically modern writing in the novel of james joyce content Introduction

1.2. The novel by J. Joyce "Ulysses" as an encyclopedia of modernism.

Consider the novel "Ulysses" in terms of its modernist innovation. Ulysses (1914-1920) was originally conceived as a short story for The Dubliners and was to be titled Mr Bloom's Day in Dublin. But gradually this story was connected in the mind of Joyce with the story of Stephen Daedalus, the main character of "Portrait of the Artist". Conceived as a small work, "Ulysses" as he worked on it grew into a huge book.

The novel tells about one day (June 16, 1904, currently this date is celebrated as Bloomsday, "Bloom's Day", and has an exact relation to the fate of Joyce himself: it was on this day that the writer's explanation with his future wife, Nora Barnacle took place) of Dublin inhabitant and a Jew by nationality - Leopold Bloom. This day Leo Bloom spends in the publishing house, on the streets and in cafes in Dublin, at the funeral of his friend, on the shore of the bay, in the maternity hospital, where he meets Stephen Dedalus, a young teacher at a local school, in a brothel and, finally, in his own house , where late at night he brings a pretty drunk Daedalus, who has lost his roof. The main intrigue of the novel is the betrayal of Bloom's wife, which Bloom knows about, but does not take any measures against her.
The outline of the novel and its compositional construction have explicit and implicit analogies with Homer's poem "The Odyssey" (in the first versions of the novel, the episodes had names corresponding to the "Odyssey", which the author later abandoned). The work also features “similar” characters: the largely autobiographical Stephen Dedalus (the storyline of Telemachus), Leopold Bloom (Odysseus, the Latin form of this name Ulysses served as the title of the novel), Garret Deasy (Nestor), etc. One of the main themes of the novel is the theme of "father-son", where Bloom symbolically plays the role of the first, Stephen - the second. Thus, we can note the first, most striking feature of Joyce's novel - a huge number of historical, philosophical, literary and cultural aspects hidden behind an unpretentious plot. Dublin appears in the novel as a symbol of the whole world, Bloom - men as such, his wife embodies the image of all women, one summer day - all times on Earth. Each character, each situation in which he finds himself, hides a lot of implicit symbolic overtones and sociocultural contexts through which Joyce tried to express his idea of \u200b\u200blife. Each episode contains different "plans" :
1) Plot plan , in which the characters of the novel act. This plan corresponds to a specific place and time of action.
2) Real, which reflects the Irish realities of the early twentieth century, the events of Joyce's own life.
3) "Homer's plan", the book is built according to the compositional scheme of the "Odyssey", its episodes parody the episodes of the classical epic, and the characters are its main characters. Ad collector Bloom, like Steven, is the same wanderer. In one day, he makes a journey that takes 20 years of the life of the hero of the Odyssey. Molly is Penelope. Dublin - Ithaca.
he allusions to the Odyssey in the text are countless. The book is built according to the compositional scheme of the Odyssey, its episodes parody the episodes of the classical epic, and the characters are its main characters. Ad collector Bloom, like Steven, is the same wanderer. In one day, he makes a journey that takes 20 years of the life of the hero of the Odyssey. Molly is Penelope. Dublin - Ithaca.[6]
First, the poem gives the novel its title, genre, and architectonics. Ulysses is a travel novel, where the episodes follow the order of the characters' movement, and the action of each is played out either directly on the road or in one specific place, ending with the hero's departure. The architectonics of the novel is a linear construction, stretched into one thread in time and realizing the odyssey paradigm: prologue, journey with a series of adventures, return; it has a middle interlude ("Wandering Rocks") and two intertwining main lines, Ulysses and Telemachus; it is divided into quite autonomous episodes, like a poem into songs.
Secondly, the poem has numerous plot functions, the main of which are two: the heroes of the novel have Homeric prototypes, and the episodes of the novel are tied to certain episodes of the poem. As is easy to see, these plot connections are very loose. Not all heroes have prototypes, and often even the main functions and features of the hero run counter to the prototype (the only act of Joyce's Penelope is adultery). The adventures of Ulysses follow a completely different order and, more importantly, in many cases they have lost the character of "adventure" altogether. Sirens, Laestrigons, Scylla and Charybdis, Bulls of the Sun... - Homer has all this - mortal dangers for Ulysses, fatal obstacles in his path, and in overcoming them - the spring of the poem, its drama. Joyce has nothing of the sort. For Bloom, all these Homeric themes do not at all carry the motives of danger, adventure, overcoming, and the mainspring and drama of the novel lies in something completely different, which has nothing to do with Homer: in Bloom's conflict with his wife, and Stephen with Mulligan and with the whole world.
It can be said, in the end, that the role and significance of the Odyssey in Joyce's novel is most important, illustrative, undeniable at the global level - the level of the general idea, scheme and structure of the work, and chronologically - at the early stages of work. Continuing on a more detailed, intra-episode level, the connection between the novel and the poem becomes less clear and less significant, giving way to other factors in the artistic system and other goals that the author sets.[7]
4) Thematic plan - the same symbolic subtext that Joyce "encrypted" in a simple plot. Most episodes have an analogy with some organ of the human body (and together they symbolize the human body). All episodes also have a certain cross-cutting semantic core-leitmotif. Joyce said on this occasion that each episode corresponds to some kind of art, and he used the concept of "art" broadly, in a medieval sense, in other words, he included it in art and science. The presence of these parallels in the novel is proved by well-known schemes for it, the first of which was compiled by the writer himself. In it you can see this chain of symbols-associations: head - stage - time - organ - color - symbol - art - technique.
For example, the chapter "Eol", in which the hero, Leopold Bloom, an advertising agent, finds himself in the editorial office of a newspaper at work, corresponds to such parallels: lungs as an organ, red color, editor as a symbol, the art of rhetoric and enthymeme as a rhetorical technique, device. In the notes to the novel, we learn about real-life prototypes depicted as acting characters, about why the episode is called “Eol” (Eol is the god of the wind, Aeolia is a floating island). The correspondence is very allegorical and rhetorical: the press, where all the winds of public opinion dwell, is the island of Eola. Corruption of journalists is associated with the incestuous marriages of Eol's children. But the main load of "Eol" is not here, but in those conversations that are conducted in the editorial office. They show a pivotal theme, and this is the historical fate of Ireland. The key to resolving the theme is the formula that Joyce himself defined the meaning of the episode: "the irony of victory" or "the deceitfulness of superiority." There are historical parallels: Ireland and its conqueror England correlate with each other like Greece and Rome, like Ancient Israel and Ancient Egypt. Through these parallels, Joyce's formula is revealed: their common content is an anti-imperial idea, a pseudo-victory of the brute power of formidable empires over a fragile spiritual principle, whose work is always a "doomed enterprise." The organ corresponding to the episode is the lungs (the theme of the wind is close to the theme of breathing, and Joyce deliberately introduces a binary respiratory rhythm in many places: inhalation - exhalation, entry - exit, thesis - antithesis ... - writing breathes. [8] First, superficial reading the novel will not make it possible to understand the meaning of these parallels.It is no coincidence that the notes to this work are no less in volume than the novel itself.