[Music] Ulysses by James Joyce Ulysses is a novel written by James Joyce in 1918 first published in installments between March 1918 and December 1920 on the American Journal the little review as a novel it was first published in 1922 the whole novel takes place on a single day Thursday June 16th 1904 which was special to Joyce because it was the day he met Nora Barnacle his future wife during the course of this day three main characters wake up have various encounters in Dublin and go to sleep 18 hours later the central character is Leopold Bloom a middle-aged newspaper canvasser and non-practicing Jew who represents Joyce's everyman Stephen Dedalus the protagonist of a portrait of an artist as a young man becomes momentarily bloom's adopted son he represents the alienated artist blooms wife Molly a voluptuous singer is planning an afternoon of adultery with her music director regarded by most critics as the prose masterpiece of modernism Ulysses greatest importance lies in its depth of character portrayal and the wide scope of its humor the book is especially famous for its use of the interior monologue or stream-of-consciousness technique which opened up a whole new way of writing fiction indicating that the rules by which we try to govern our lives are constantly at the mercy of accident chance encounter and oddities of the mind as its title suggests Ulysses is related to homers great epic The Odyssey The Tale of Odysseus and his travels after the Trojan War Joyce used the Odyssey as a structural framework for his book arranging its characters and events around Homer's heroic model with bloomers Ulysses Steven as his son Telemachus and Molly as the faithful Penelope Ulysses is the climax of Joyce's creativity and sums up the themes and techniques he had developed in his previous works it was designed as a detailed account of orderly life on an ordinary Dublin day and Joyce planned each movement of each character on each Street as though he were playing chess he placed them in houses he knew drinking him pops he had frequented walking on cobblestones he retraced he made the very air of Dublin the atmosphere the feeling the places almost indistinguishable certainly inseparable from his human characters consequently Dublin becomes itself a character in this novel this use of the mythical dimension to provide a shaping background for his modern epic is called the mythical method by TS Eliot who sees the heroic prototype as a constant reminder of how greatly our modern age has fallen Ulysses mr. Leopold Bloom it with relished the inner organs of beasts and fowls he liked thick giblet soup nutty desserts a stuffed roast heart liver slices fried with crust crumbs fried hem Cod's rolls most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate refined tang of faintly scented yo t kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly writing her breakfast things on the hob betray gelid lights and there were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere made him feel a bit peckish the coals were reddening another slice of bread and butter 3/4 right she didn't like a plate for bright he turned from the tray lifted the kettle off the hob set its sideways on the fire it's at their dull and squat its spouts dug out cup of tea soon would mouth dry the cash walked stiffly round the leg of the table was tail on high no oh there you are mr. bloom said turning from the fire the cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a lick of the table mooing just how she stalks over my writing table scratch my head mr. bloom watched curiously kindly the live black for clean to see the claw surface leak hide the white button under the butterfat a of the green flashing eyes he bent down to her his hands on his knee he milked for the person he said me the cat cried they called them stupid they understand what we say better than we understand them she understands all she wants to vindictive - wonder what I look like - her height of a tower no she can jump me