Ulysses

Publication history

· 1919 - 5 sections serialized in The Egoist by Harriet Shaw Weaver

· complaints from subscribers and printers

· 1918 – 1920 some parts serialized in The Little Review by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap

· husband of typist destroyed about 40 pages of original version as he thought it obscene

· 1920 – Joyce prepared schema or plan of Ulysses showing parallels to Homer’s Odyssey; sent copy to Carlo Linati, who had translated Joyce’s play, Exiles

· Joyce sent revised copy to Valéry Larbaud, a French writer, who was supportive of Joyce’s work

· 1921 – The Little Review charged and found guilty of obscenity, Heap and Anderson were fined

· Sylvia Beach pub the novel from her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company

· printer, Darantière, made 1000 copies; Beach circulated the Linati schema

· Linati schema provides chapter titles from Odyssey which do not exist in Ulysses

· The Egoist press printed second edition of 2000 copies

· copies of novel seized at entry to U.S. and U.K.

· 1924 – Shakespeare and Company pub. new edition

· 1930 – Stuart Gilbert published third schema 1930 in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”

· 1934 U.S ban lifted and published by Random House

· 1936 published in U.K.

· Gilbert schema: 8:00 a.m. Thursday, July 16, 1904; Martello Tower in Sandycove; Telemachus/Hamlet = Stephen; Antinous/Claudius = Mulligan; Mentor = Milkwoman

· Odysseus is at sea; Telemachus is at home in Ithaca, threatened by his mother’s suitors and his father’s absence

· guided by Pallas Athena, goddess of war and peace, Telemachus begins journey to find news of his absent father

· Linatti schema: symbols are Hamlet, Ireland and Stephen; Mentor, Pallas Athena, the Suitors and Penelope as Muse

Telemachus

· identity of Stephen with Telemachus and Hamlet suggests youthful knight figure who lacks paternal advice and guidance

· expectations of the quest confounded at the outset of the novel:

· Grail is already in evidence at the beginning of the novel in form of the chalice Mulligan mocks the recovery of the Grail (1)

· Martello Tower – resembles castle inhabited by Grail knight Stephen and Mulligan are squatters, not knights in liege to Fisher King Mulligan calls the tower the “omphalos” (20)

· historically, Martello tower built by British as defense against French – tower was recently evacuated by Army; Stephen and Mulligan are in the castle of the conquering forces

· Stephen has a “lance”- his ashplant (20), but as colonized subject he can never he hero (12)

· openly rejects role of knight: “I’m not a hero, however” (3)

· acknowledges he is bound to pope and king (24)

· Grail cannot offer Stephen or his community regeneration associated with the Grail

· Grail is also associated with death instead of life – white china bowl of vomit (4)

· Fisher King’s subjugation of Ireland has destroyed the regenerative feminine; contributes to Irish genocide

Proteus

· Sandymount Beach 11:00 a.m.

· Telemachus is at palace of Menelaus, who recalls his own trip from Troy and how he was trapped in Egypt; Proteus minion of Poseidon, helps Menelaus to break the spell that holds him in Egypt

· Stephen recalls trip to Paris and intellectual traps that hold him “hostage”

Role of the feminine

· archetypal feminine: all archetype have two aspects – positive and negative

· mother archetype – symbolized by snake which reveals possibility for regeneration and destruction

· Great Mother archetype - associated with the earth that produces crops and habital environment, the cycles of the moon, the tides, the womb; symbolized by bowl (Grail), water, circular

· Terrible Mother – associated with death, being swallowed or devoured, the earth that sucks us back into her in death, tomb; symbolized by coffin, dark cave,arid landscape; the carious mountains of ‘What the Thunder Said’

· Carl June, the psychologist argues that when a culture represses an archetype, the archetype resurfaces in its negative form

· Stephen conflates his dead mother with sexuality; no hope for regeneration

· Mulligan sees the ocean as “our grey sweet mother” (3); Stephen sees the ocean as Terrible Mother who devours (57)

· water is perceived as destructive rather than restorative (cf. The Waste Land)

· feminine linked to death:

o Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mind, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls the hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te venial [All flesh will come to thee] He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss. (59-60).

· confuses archetypal feminine with actual feminine (61)

· Stephen sees feminine as luring him to death; desirable, yet destructive

· sees beach at Sandymount as wasteland of destructive feminine (55)

· recognizes the need to recover the restorative Grail, but lacks a mythic system with which to replace rejected quest

· becomes impotent figure

· ashplant becomes vestigal appendage that carries nostalgia for quest, but is useless

· his mind is full of received knowledge (religion, philosophy, mysticism), but cannot locate his own thoughts