Ulysses (Romance)
See also: Ulysses (homonymy)
Ulysses is the title of a Romance of James Joyce, published in 1922. Qualified “cathedral of prose”, he is recognized like one of the most important novels of the 20th century, in particular by the fact that he captures and restores modernity of it.
History
The novel reports the apparently banal peregrinations of its hero, Leopold Bloom, small middle-class man without history, of Jewish origin (but whose parents converted with Protestantism), through real places of Dublin. The action proceeds over the day of the June 16th 1904, 8 a.m. of the morning at 3 a.m. in the night.
Work analyzes
The construction of the novel refers actually to the Odyssée of Homère, the voyages of Ulysses being illustrated, and being parodied, by displacements of Léopold in the city. Each chapter refers in a way hidden to the adventures of Ulysses, but also to a body of the human body, a color, an art and a symbol. The 18 episodes are gathered in three great parts according to the plan of the original: Télémachie, the Odyssey, Nostos. The three chapters of Télémachie do not refer to a body, but are centered on another character, Stephen Dedalus, friend of Léopold. Dedalus appears Télémaque, but also James Joyce itself, and also the autobiographer of Portrait of the artist as an young man (1915), a few years later. This novel thus comprises several reading levels, according to the various keys which decode it.
The construction and the various techniques of writing used, which change with each episode, obtained a broad echo at the time of its publication. Written between 1914 and 1921, it was published by episodes in an American review, then censured. The first publication took place in Paris in 1922, only publication of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, founded by American (Sylvia Beach).
In this work Joyce reinvents the novel several times, by the changes of style, while freeing themselves from the barriers of the language, and by moving the object of the novel: narration of the events to the narration itself and the interior thoughts of the characters. The thoughts there are followed such as they appear, change. The novel is completed by the monolog-river of the woman Léopold, length of 38 pages and cut out in only eight sentences.
Ulysses is a work summons, very erudite, parody of the episodes of Ulysses by very basic and precise descriptions of the moments of the daily life, as of the flow of the thoughts which results from this among various characters. These descriptions indeed try to capture “what is the life”, in the context of the modernity of the beginning of the 20th century.
The first French translation was started since 1924 and was made mainly by Auguste Morel, with a participation and a supervision of Valery Larbaud. Its publication goes back to 1929.
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