L'ulisse di j. joyce

L'ULISSE DI J. JOYCE

The composition of the "Ulysses" absorbed Joyce starting from 1914 until 1922, the year of its publication. In the novel developed an autobiographical fragment that was supposed to appear in Dedalus. The work should have been an ideal continuation of previous novel, which tells the rebellion of a young Dubliner to the oppressive environment of the city and the choice to seek himself in literary activity. Stephen, the protagonist is not the hero who wants to change the world, but rather the artist who finds his vocation and in it translates his conception of life. In addition Dedalus preludes, with its technique of interior monologue and the accentuation of stream of consciousness, to the experimental results of the Ulysses.

The Ulysses soon became an autonomous narrative universe, full of reminders and symmetries with the entire production of the writer. Indirectly linked to the drama "Exiles", in which he treats the theme of the crisis of the couple. The Ulysses presents a story that takes place over time one day and present again the deeds of three characters placed in parallel with the three key figures of 'Odyssey: Ulysses, Penelope and Telemachus (in the novel Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus). This sort of pilgrimage of contemporary man has as background a grey Dublin, where squalid men consume their impotence and their frustrations.

Leopold Bloom is not a solitary traveler as Ulysses, but lives in a big city, has a family and social relations. The analysis of his day automatically intertwines with that of many persons he comes into contact, from family (his wife Molly and his son Stephen) to large group of friends, acquaintances and colleagues, encountered during the roaming through Dublin, the narrative backbone of the book. The novel has a choral dimension and the linear plot apparently hides an extreme density of content and a rich plurality of voices, but the complex interweaving of the book seems even more obvious when one considers that Joyce wanted to give an account not only of actions, but also the mental processes most intimate and stowed in each character, trying to offer a comprehensive picture of psychological mechanisms that guide the life of an entire community, its habits, its scale of values, its tastes and its behaviour. Through the technique of 'stream of consciousness'  the writer puts us in direct contact with the manifestations of thought elementary nascent state, even before that the reason is intervened with the filter of his action and ordering organizer. The result is shocking for the intensity of emotions and reveals the strength of the analysis.

Ulysses is a text whose narration is particularly complex and difficult to summarize. Joyce's masterpiece is retained very similar in form and in content to Omero's Odissea, like we can notice from the follow scheme.

Characters:

Stephen Dedalus in pursuit of his father is the Telemaco of the situation.

Buck Malligan is the friend who Shephen lives with, in who we recognize Antinoo, the character of the classic Odissea.

Leopold Bloom commercial agent of Dublin that is Ulisse, Jewish he feels still foreign among the irish. Married for sixteen years with an unfaithful (Molly) is the Ulisse without Telemaco, separated from his Penelope.

Finally there is Molly Bloom who embodies the Omeric character of Penelope.

Parallelism between Omeric Odissea and the Joice's "Odissea":

1) TELEMACHIA

 2) ODISSEA

In analessi:

3) IL RITORNO

From The Odyssey  resumes time and space: the wandering of Ulysses in distant lands and seas become movements Bloom on the streets and bars of Dublin from eight am to small hours of a single day .Bloom is the average man, sensual, positive and inefficient, curious about new experiences but timid and cautious, looking for scientific concretenesses and human relations that he is not able to find. Stephen is the idealist in search of spiritual values, who rebels everyday in an attempt to find an intellectual consistency.

While Bloom, jew from origin, but non-believer or practitioner, was born already in the condition of exile, Stephen makes this condition a deliberate choice: he has in common with Bloom the same inefficiency and inability to achieve the deepest aspirations. The one and the other remain in a position of search, and are, therefore, complementary personalities. On the narrative this complementarity is manifested in the fact that Bloom has lost his only natural son, who died in infancy, and his aspiration is to find a new son. Stephen, in turn, refused his natural father and his same aspiration, his research is that of a paternal figure who takes his place.
Both Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus are Joyce's projections in two different ages.
The third protagonist, the unfaithful wife of Leopold, is intended to sum up in his final monologue all the women who appear in the book and their mythical counterparts is not only Penelope, but also the nymph Calypso (4 ° episode), and is reflected in Nausica-Gerty McDowell (13 ° episode) and Circe-Bella Cohen (15 ° episode). Molly is the essence of feminine nature, an expression of physicality most absolute and unconditional acceptance but not passive of the human condition.