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Ulysses
A masterful introduction to James Joyce's Ulysses . There is no book like Ulysses , and no book about it quite like this one. Now completely revised to correspond to the definitive new Galber edition, Hugh Kenner's ULYSSES for the first time becomes widley available in the United States. With characteristic flair, Kenner explores the ways Joyce teaches us to read his novel as Joyce taught himself to moving from the simple to the complex, from the familiar to the strange and new, from the norms of the nineteenth-century novel to the open forms of modernism. Kenner offers new interpretations on a wide range of topics and details, including the Homeric parrallels, the flow of episodes and style, and the enigma of Molly's final word. Joyceans, teacher, their students, and all other readers will find cause for rejoicing in ULYSSES.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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February 25, 2017
Looking for someone to play Virgil to your Dante Alighieri as you make your first descent into James Joyce's Ulysses? Take Stuart Gilbert along with you, and probably keep a lifeline open to Don Gifford. But when you're ready for your first re-read of the book, you could do far worse than bringing Hugh Kenner along for the ride. Kenner is ever thoughtful, always original in his provocative 1980 book, Ulysses, in the Unwin Critical Library series ( Claude Rawson, ed.), which remains an important contribution to criticism of that singular novel by Joyce.
The complexity of Joyce's texts, their symmetries and intricately interlacing design elements, captivated me from the beginning. Kenner has much to say about this aspect of Joyce's work, and about other aspects as well. We see how A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is indebted to the numerology and chiasmatic structure of Dante's Vita Nuova, for example (although Kenner doesn't mention it by name): the three episodes and diary entries of Chapter V reverse the overture and three episodes of Chapter I. Evolving characterization colors the narration in Portrait, and this pattern spills over into Ulysses, where the tendency expands exponentially.
The construction of Ulysses approximates two kinds of novel joined together, as Kenner points out and illustrates repeatedly. Written in the initial style, the first nine episodes ― Telemachus through Scylla and Charybdis ― can be viewed as a more traditional narrative-based novel which is most well known for its use of interior monologue. Next comes the hinge episode, Wandering Rocks, connecting the first nine episodes to the last eight. Wandering Rocks is a chimera of the initial style and the first striking intrusion by the Arranger (think of an independent second narrator or hijacker of the text; the Arranger was identified and named a decade earlier by David Hayman). This second half of the book ― Sirens through Penelope ― is dominated by the takeover of the text by the intrusive and sabotaging Arranger. Ulysses begins with two triads of episodes: the first group of three and the second group of three take place in different spaces at the same time. The last three episodes of the book ― Eumaeus, Ithaca and Penelope, comprising the final part of the novel, the Nostos, form a natural triad of their own.
Importantly, Kenner emphasizes broad structural parallelisms that, as if by magnetic force, bind together certain episodes in the different halves of the book: those linking Aeolus to Cyclops, Proteus to Nausicaa, and Scylla and Charybdis to Oxen of the Sun. These parallelisms and linkages help establish the broadest pattern trussing together the novel's stylistically divergent episodes into a single text. A few examples are demonstrative. The constantly interrupted text of Aeolus is mirrored by the gigantism interruptions, journalistic in style, which break up the text of Cyclops. The Cyclops adventure immediately follows the Aeolus adventure in The Odyssey, so the parallelism is a connection for episodes chronologically separated in Ulysses. Proteus is a two-part episode, with Stephen Dedalus first walking across the sand, then with Stephen sitting on the rocks at Sandymount Strand. Nausicaa is clearly a two-part episode, the first featuring Gerty MacDowell sitting on the sand, the second featuring Leopold Bloom on the rocks at Sandymount Strand. Both Scylla and Charybdis and Oxen of the Sun begin with Stephen as the center of attention among a group of companions until Buck Mulligan arrives to steal the spotlight from him. In The Odyssey the Oxen of the Sun incident follows immediately after the Scylla and Charybdis incident, again restoring a chronological disjunction in Ulysses.
Kenner doesn't address the fact that this approach leaves a few episodes unaccounted for; viz., Lestrygonians, Sirens and Circe. Sirens is the opening of the Arranger's grand performance while Circe is its crowning achievement, not to mention a reconstitution of the entire novel up to that point. The Lestrygonians episode, according to this schema, seems to be an orphan.
In point of fact, while these are items of interest to Kenner, they are not of overwhelming interest to him, but are illustrative of the content of Kenner's book. Kenner makes many shrewd observations about Ulysses throughout his book that I hadn't noticed previously. He tells us a great deal about Joyce's use of motifs and even of individual words and clusters of words to hold his books together. He demonstrates Buck Mulligan's full frontal nudity in the opening page of the book. He explains that Stephen may well have gone to Sandymount Strand intending to seek lodging for the night. He points out the implications of Corny Kelleher's role as a police informant. He underscores how the orderliness of the first half of the book begins to give way to the chaos of the second half in close approximation to the time of the assignation between Molly and Boylan. He notes how the tableau of Mina Purefoy in labor at the lying-in hospital, even as the doctors carouse downstairs, picks up on the imagery of Penelope and the Suitors in The Odyssey. On the first page of Scylla and Charybdis, Kenner mentions, Eglinton mentions six brave medicals, and in Oxen of the Sun Stephen confronts six not-exactly-brave medicals. Stephen imagines William Shakespeare as a restless man with a lively daughter and a dead son, uneasily yoked to a wife who conquered him once and cuckolds him now, all of which equally apply to Leopold Bloom. The sailor Murphy has tattooed on his chest a portrait of the artist as a young man. On and on.
Kenner concludes his book by referring to Ulysses as ― I paraphrase ― a hologram of words. This may be the best description of Ulysses as I've ever encountered, for reasons too complicated to spell out here. This is an excellent book about Ulysses and one that is very well written. Much to think about. Quite recommended.
The complexity of Joyce's texts, their symmetries and intricately interlacing design elements, captivated me from the beginning. Kenner has much to say about this aspect of Joyce's work, and about other aspects as well. We see how A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is indebted to the numerology and chiasmatic structure of Dante's Vita Nuova, for example (although Kenner doesn't mention it by name): the three episodes and diary entries of Chapter V reverse the overture and three episodes of Chapter I. Evolving characterization colors the narration in Portrait, and this pattern spills over into Ulysses, where the tendency expands exponentially.
The construction of Ulysses approximates two kinds of novel joined together, as Kenner points out and illustrates repeatedly. Written in the initial style, the first nine episodes ― Telemachus through Scylla and Charybdis ― can be viewed as a more traditional narrative-based novel which is most well known for its use of interior monologue. Next comes the hinge episode, Wandering Rocks, connecting the first nine episodes to the last eight. Wandering Rocks is a chimera of the initial style and the first striking intrusion by the Arranger (think of an independent second narrator or hijacker of the text; the Arranger was identified and named a decade earlier by David Hayman). This second half of the book ― Sirens through Penelope ― is dominated by the takeover of the text by the intrusive and sabotaging Arranger. Ulysses begins with two triads of episodes: the first group of three and the second group of three take place in different spaces at the same time. The last three episodes of the book ― Eumaeus, Ithaca and Penelope, comprising the final part of the novel, the Nostos, form a natural triad of their own.
Importantly, Kenner emphasizes broad structural parallelisms that, as if by magnetic force, bind together certain episodes in the different halves of the book: those linking Aeolus to Cyclops, Proteus to Nausicaa, and Scylla and Charybdis to Oxen of the Sun. These parallelisms and linkages help establish the broadest pattern trussing together the novel's stylistically divergent episodes into a single text. A few examples are demonstrative. The constantly interrupted text of Aeolus is mirrored by the gigantism interruptions, journalistic in style, which break up the text of Cyclops. The Cyclops adventure immediately follows the Aeolus adventure in The Odyssey, so the parallelism is a connection for episodes chronologically separated in Ulysses. Proteus is a two-part episode, with Stephen Dedalus first walking across the sand, then with Stephen sitting on the rocks at Sandymount Strand. Nausicaa is clearly a two-part episode, the first featuring Gerty MacDowell sitting on the sand, the second featuring Leopold Bloom on the rocks at Sandymount Strand. Both Scylla and Charybdis and Oxen of the Sun begin with Stephen as the center of attention among a group of companions until Buck Mulligan arrives to steal the spotlight from him. In The Odyssey the Oxen of the Sun incident follows immediately after the Scylla and Charybdis incident, again restoring a chronological disjunction in Ulysses.
Kenner doesn't address the fact that this approach leaves a few episodes unaccounted for; viz., Lestrygonians, Sirens and Circe. Sirens is the opening of the Arranger's grand performance while Circe is its crowning achievement, not to mention a reconstitution of the entire novel up to that point. The Lestrygonians episode, according to this schema, seems to be an orphan.
In point of fact, while these are items of interest to Kenner, they are not of overwhelming interest to him, but are illustrative of the content of Kenner's book. Kenner makes many shrewd observations about Ulysses throughout his book that I hadn't noticed previously. He tells us a great deal about Joyce's use of motifs and even of individual words and clusters of words to hold his books together. He demonstrates Buck Mulligan's full frontal nudity in the opening page of the book. He explains that Stephen may well have gone to Sandymount Strand intending to seek lodging for the night. He points out the implications of Corny Kelleher's role as a police informant. He underscores how the orderliness of the first half of the book begins to give way to the chaos of the second half in close approximation to the time of the assignation between Molly and Boylan. He notes how the tableau of Mina Purefoy in labor at the lying-in hospital, even as the doctors carouse downstairs, picks up on the imagery of Penelope and the Suitors in The Odyssey. On the first page of Scylla and Charybdis, Kenner mentions, Eglinton mentions six brave medicals, and in Oxen of the Sun Stephen confronts six not-exactly-brave medicals. Stephen imagines William Shakespeare as a restless man with a lively daughter and a dead son, uneasily yoked to a wife who conquered him once and cuckolds him now, all of which equally apply to Leopold Bloom. The sailor Murphy has tattooed on his chest a portrait of the artist as a young man. On and on.
Kenner concludes his book by referring to Ulysses as ― I paraphrase ― a hologram of words. This may be the best description of Ulysses as I've ever encountered, for reasons too complicated to spell out here. This is an excellent book about Ulysses and one that is very well written. Much to think about. Quite recommended.
July 23, 2016
A true Ulysses story: when I was in fourth grade or thereabouts, I was assigned a report on Ulysses S. Grant, something or other president of the United States. Being a youth excited about scholarship but not sure how to research, I wandered around my excellent community library until I found something which looked apposite: Joyce's Ulysses. I sometimes pity the poor librarian who had to check Joyce out to a 12 year old or whatever.
Also true: I like Hugh Kenner a lot. I tend to think he explains and exemplifies a lot that is most interesting in Modernism in particular and literary scholarship as such. When I found that Kenner had written a book entitled Ulysses, I was willing therefore to re-read Joyce's work for the first time since I was about eighteen and the experience disgusted me to no end in order that I could therefore read Kenner's book with an easy conscience.
It was worth it.
Also true: I like Hugh Kenner a lot. I tend to think he explains and exemplifies a lot that is most interesting in Modernism in particular and literary scholarship as such. When I found that Kenner had written a book entitled Ulysses, I was willing therefore to re-read Joyce's work for the first time since I was about eighteen and the experience disgusted me to no end in order that I could therefore read Kenner's book with an easy conscience.
It was worth it.
August 16, 2016
Joyce was 40 yrs old when Ulysses was published, it is a day in the life of a husband and father of Joyce's age (at publication). Joyce loved Dublin and Ireland and though the book was written on the European continent - he wanted to memorialize his birth home (Ireland). The framework of Ulysses is Homer's Odyssey - The Roman Ulysses: 1 Telemachus, 2 Nestor, 3 Proteus, 4 Calypso, 5 Lotus Eaters, 6 Hades, 7 Aeolus, 8 Lestrygonians, 9 Scylla And Charybdis, 10 Wandering Rocks, 11 Sirens, 12 Cyclops, 13 Nausicca, 14 Oxen Of The Sun, 15 Circe, 16 Eumaeus, 17 Ithaca, and 18 Penelope.
Ulysses is the tale of a Modern-day Odysseus, Leopold Bloom in his personal existential/sexual quest. The conclusion of this quest is the quintessential affirmation of humanity, the fundamental family unit - the father, mother, son, and daughter. Like Odysseus, absent from Penelope, traveling the world, for many long years, Leopold Bloom is also absent from his Penelope (in Dublin). Like a traveler (Odysseus), Bloom is sexually absent (abstinent) from Molly “10 years, 5 months and 18 days” (736). Unlike Odysseus, the obstacles Bloom faces are psychological (modern) - internal travails instead of Odysseus' external travails. Bloom's only son’s death has become a psychological barrier; as Molly reflects: “we were never the same since” (778). Yet Bloom is optimistic throughout the work - in regard to the possibility of another child, again Molly: ”Ill give him one more chance” (780). Affirmatively (as we grow to know Molly) we find she has given and is willing to continue to give Bloom “one more chance”. Through the course of the (Dublin) day, Bloom experiences “deep frustration, humiliation, fear, punishment and catharsis” (Herring, p.74). Bloom needs to lead himself back, out of self-deception, fantasy, and frustration to Molly’s (and his marriage) bed.
Bloom’s travails come in the Circe chapter and it is imperative (for Joyce) that as readers, we recognize Joyce’s change from Homer's Odyssey - this is Joyce's major rework, deviating from his Greek predecessor. For Odysseus: insight, understanding, enlightenment, and all importantly direction come to Odysseus in his journey to the (ancient Greek) Underworld. For Bloom, the Hades chapter or “the other world” represents an “emptiness of mind”; Joyce was a man grounded (and devoted) to the present world of man's consciousness and unconsciousness. In Ulysses enlightenment comes in the Circe chapter: described though the Joycean technique of hallucination or the discoveries of the "unconscious mind”. Joyce's Circe chapter (a surrealistic one-act Ibsen-like play) is where Bloom finds self-possession - (Joyce makes) Bloom encounter his own psycho-sexual existential questions, rather than finding life's answers in the dead ghosts of his life (the ancient Greek Hades chapter of the dead past).
In the Circe chapter, Bloom confronts and overcomes every major obstacle in his existential/sexual quest: the Molly he serves in Calypso reappears as Bello the whoremistress, Molly’s letter from Boylan and his from Martha are reworked into a series of seductive letters ending in a trial, his sexual infidelities beginning with Lotty Clarke and ending with Gerty McDowell are relived (importantly balanced by Molly’s infidelities) and reconciled, and lastly, Bloom triumphs over whore, Virgin-Goddess, and most importantly himself. Joyce equanimously gives both Molly and Bloom extramarital sexual infidelities - infidelities known by each of the other (as early as the Calypso chapter) Bloom was conscious of what was to come. Of course there will be resolution in marriage, for Molly only needs to feel that Bloom is willing. As we read, Bloom has undergone the travails of his own mind and has emerged Victorious. He has succeeded in his psycho-sexual existential quest. He has arrived at Molly’s bed. Self-possessed. Victorious. Eager.
Molly "I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him...then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down in to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (END)".
After publishing Ulysses, Joyce began FINNEGANS WAKE (FW) - Joyce largely stepped out of one work into his next (and last work). The change Joyce made in FW was instead of using Homer's Ulysses as a framework - FW's framework is Giambattista Vico's "La Scienza Nuova's" 4 cyclic stages of history.
Joyce realized that he ended Ulysses wrongly (not in accordance with the Universe) in Molly's bed - Joyce corrects his mistake in FINNEGANS WAKE by incorporating Vico's revelation of restart / recirculation. "HCE day" similar to Bloomsday (roughly 24 hrs): Chronologically FW starts with memories in "book I:3" of HCE arrested in front of his tavern/home, like Bloom unable to enter his front door (but HCE does not enter his home through the back door) - instead HCE is arrested for disturbances in hours before dawn. Then memories "book I:4" HCE's conscious/musings or unconscious/dream psychological travails of past guilts (underworld coffin, Ulysses ch Hades) while incarcerated in early hours of morning. Followed by memories "book I:2" HCE walks home through Phoenix Park accosted for the time of day (12 noon) which threatens (real/unreal memories, Ulysses ch Nausicaa) his innocent well-being. These 3 chapters in FW are Joyce's major rework to incorporate Vico's revelation of restart / recirculation into FW - Joyce rewrites 3 chapters of Ulysses: When He is denied Her front door, He is in Hell (on earth), when released (from Hell) His odyssey to Her begins again (with His ever-present accompanying internal travails) for She always knows when He is worthy of Her acceptance (their Paradise).
Then "book I:1" Finnegan's afternoon wake at HCE's tavern and retelling memories (books I:2-4). Inside HCE's tavern (his ship) his patrons talk about his family (Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter), truthful letters (ALP) and fabricated stories (books I:5-8 & II:3); while the children (Shaun, Shem and Iseult) are in and out of the family tavern/home all day taking their lessons (book II:2) and playing about with their friends (Shem's closing dream, book II:1); HCE, as proprietor, defends himself with a self-deprecating apologia before his intoxicated collapse late night (book II:3). HCE dreams on his tavern floor (book II:4); then dreams in his bed (books III:1-3); before intercourse with his wife ALP (book III:4). HCE & ALP's lovemaking dissolution dream (book IV) to awaken to a new day, Joycean Nirvana is attained by ALP's (& HCE's) unification with the Unmanifest (Creation, Incarnate conception) and Reincarnation (the baton has been passed on again), awaiting Joyce's God "thunderclap" at the beginning of FW's "book I".
FW is aural (oral) history like Homer's Odessey and Celtic folktales - when one pronounces (phonology) FW's words (aloud) there are more languages than just English; also, when one reads (morphology) FW's words almost all the words are "portmanteaus / neologisms" which gives each of FW's "poly-syncretic" words many meanings (universal impermanence, Heisenberg uncertainty/obscurity), each FW syncretic sentence dozens of possible messages, each FW syncretic paragraph hundreds of possible readings, Joyce's rendering of a more expansive English language and multiplicating universal book with coalescing syncretic themes/stories (that responds/opens to each reader's inquiries). Joyce schooled in Christian Jesuit metaphysics (pushed down into the mindfulness of human consciousness) breathes in the spirit of expansive Celtic (Irish) democratic community tavern life where man's stories of life are told. Tavern life teaches the evolution of Joyce's ten God "thunderclaps" (one hundred lettered words) pushing man's evolution forward from cave man's tales to modern tv media tales. Inside the tavern man learns of the purely human (animal) fall, taken down by another human(s) - like animal taken down on the African savanna. A granular reading of FW can render FW as an updated John Milton's Paradise Lost (regurgitated knowledge from the tree, to affirm man's damnation); however, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859 and Joyce in FW book II clearly walks Shaun, Shem and Iseult through their earthly evolutionary lifetime travails, our mortality is a consequence of Life's evolution. Every page of FW speaks to man's evolution (unconscious biological, conscious social, aspirational personal) and to Life recirculating (West meets Dzogchen East a "meeting of metaphysical minds") that binds humanity together into the future. Dzogchen (beyond all dualistic polarities) the heart of human consciousness - Joyce's underlying (subcutaneous) arguments refute the "Western curse of metaphysical/mythological damnation", the curse does not exist in the Eastern mind. Like "counting the number of angels on the head of a pin" (Aquinas 1270) Joyce provides a granular/expansive reading of FW as a "defense against all Western adversity" for our conscious and unconscious Western travails. HCE's angst is caused by his community that imposes a Western curse (damnation) upon him that man is not guilty of...to experience Joycean Nirvana, a defense against this man-made guilt is required - for as Zoroaster revealed cosmogonic dualism, evil is mixed with good in man's universal everyday travails (even the Dalai Lama must defend Nirvana rigorously from the most populous authoritarian state in human history).
Joyce's FW celebrates the Joys of Christian/Buddhist diversity of humanity (expansive human consciousness: Gnostic Norwegian Captain, Shem, Archdruid), Brahma (Finnegan, HCE, Shaun), Divine Women (ALP, Iseult, Nuvoletta), his family - and the Sufferings of the inescapable "evil" of Shiva (Buckley), the debilitating harmful sterile intrusive authoritarian institutionalizing damnation (MaMaLuJo, St. Patrick) by Augustine, the manufactured clerical corruption identified by Luther (since 367 AD) and the burdens of "survival of the fittest" anxiety (modern commerce) met with a Dzogchen Buddhist stance. The (innocent infant) Norwegian Captain (Krishna, HCE), occasionally defensive (Shiva, HCE), though concretized (Brahma, HCE) by community family life (MaMaLuJo) - through spirits (drink) HCE can access his spirituality (dreams) and through spiritual (cutting through) love-making with ALP (direct approach) can access (their Krishnas) unification with the Unmanifest. Joyce was a Prophet who consumed Man's conscious and spiritual "thoughts and dreams, history and gossip, efforts and failings" - to reveal the joys (Nirvana) and sufferings (Saṃsāra) of Mankind.
Joyce's FW message: Christian/Buddhist omniscient compassion (Christ/Krishna) is eternally joyful and recirculating. Affirmative family (HCE/Brahma, ALP/Divine woman & children) existentiality: life's biological evolution (sex), modern survival (money), constraining community (Dharma, social evolution) are constantly assaulted by inescapable "aggressive insidious vile" corrupt soul(less/sucking) ossified demonic antipathetic attacks. Joycean Nirvana is attained via the Christian/Buddhist affirmative middle way, "beyond polar opposites" the path of Christ/Buddha.
JCB
Ulysses is the tale of a Modern-day Odysseus, Leopold Bloom in his personal existential/sexual quest. The conclusion of this quest is the quintessential affirmation of humanity, the fundamental family unit - the father, mother, son, and daughter. Like Odysseus, absent from Penelope, traveling the world, for many long years, Leopold Bloom is also absent from his Penelope (in Dublin). Like a traveler (Odysseus), Bloom is sexually absent (abstinent) from Molly “10 years, 5 months and 18 days” (736). Unlike Odysseus, the obstacles Bloom faces are psychological (modern) - internal travails instead of Odysseus' external travails. Bloom's only son’s death has become a psychological barrier; as Molly reflects: “we were never the same since” (778). Yet Bloom is optimistic throughout the work - in regard to the possibility of another child, again Molly: ”Ill give him one more chance” (780). Affirmatively (as we grow to know Molly) we find she has given and is willing to continue to give Bloom “one more chance”. Through the course of the (Dublin) day, Bloom experiences “deep frustration, humiliation, fear, punishment and catharsis” (Herring, p.74). Bloom needs to lead himself back, out of self-deception, fantasy, and frustration to Molly’s (and his marriage) bed.
Bloom’s travails come in the Circe chapter and it is imperative (for Joyce) that as readers, we recognize Joyce’s change from Homer's Odyssey - this is Joyce's major rework, deviating from his Greek predecessor. For Odysseus: insight, understanding, enlightenment, and all importantly direction come to Odysseus in his journey to the (ancient Greek) Underworld. For Bloom, the Hades chapter or “the other world” represents an “emptiness of mind”; Joyce was a man grounded (and devoted) to the present world of man's consciousness and unconsciousness. In Ulysses enlightenment comes in the Circe chapter: described though the Joycean technique of hallucination or the discoveries of the "unconscious mind”. Joyce's Circe chapter (a surrealistic one-act Ibsen-like play) is where Bloom finds self-possession - (Joyce makes) Bloom encounter his own psycho-sexual existential questions, rather than finding life's answers in the dead ghosts of his life (the ancient Greek Hades chapter of the dead past).
In the Circe chapter, Bloom confronts and overcomes every major obstacle in his existential/sexual quest: the Molly he serves in Calypso reappears as Bello the whoremistress, Molly’s letter from Boylan and his from Martha are reworked into a series of seductive letters ending in a trial, his sexual infidelities beginning with Lotty Clarke and ending with Gerty McDowell are relived (importantly balanced by Molly’s infidelities) and reconciled, and lastly, Bloom triumphs over whore, Virgin-Goddess, and most importantly himself. Joyce equanimously gives both Molly and Bloom extramarital sexual infidelities - infidelities known by each of the other (as early as the Calypso chapter) Bloom was conscious of what was to come. Of course there will be resolution in marriage, for Molly only needs to feel that Bloom is willing. As we read, Bloom has undergone the travails of his own mind and has emerged Victorious. He has succeeded in his psycho-sexual existential quest. He has arrived at Molly’s bed. Self-possessed. Victorious. Eager.
Molly "I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him...then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down in to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (END)".
After publishing Ulysses, Joyce began FINNEGANS WAKE (FW) - Joyce largely stepped out of one work into his next (and last work). The change Joyce made in FW was instead of using Homer's Ulysses as a framework - FW's framework is Giambattista Vico's "La Scienza Nuova's" 4 cyclic stages of history.
Joyce realized that he ended Ulysses wrongly (not in accordance with the Universe) in Molly's bed - Joyce corrects his mistake in FINNEGANS WAKE by incorporating Vico's revelation of restart / recirculation. "HCE day" similar to Bloomsday (roughly 24 hrs): Chronologically FW starts with memories in "book I:3" of HCE arrested in front of his tavern/home, like Bloom unable to enter his front door (but HCE does not enter his home through the back door) - instead HCE is arrested for disturbances in hours before dawn. Then memories "book I:4" HCE's conscious/musings or unconscious/dream psychological travails of past guilts (underworld coffin, Ulysses ch Hades) while incarcerated in early hours of morning. Followed by memories "book I:2" HCE walks home through Phoenix Park accosted for the time of day (12 noon) which threatens (real/unreal memories, Ulysses ch Nausicaa) his innocent well-being. These 3 chapters in FW are Joyce's major rework to incorporate Vico's revelation of restart / recirculation into FW - Joyce rewrites 3 chapters of Ulysses: When He is denied Her front door, He is in Hell (on earth), when released (from Hell) His odyssey to Her begins again (with His ever-present accompanying internal travails) for She always knows when He is worthy of Her acceptance (their Paradise).
Then "book I:1" Finnegan's afternoon wake at HCE's tavern and retelling memories (books I:2-4). Inside HCE's tavern (his ship) his patrons talk about his family (Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter), truthful letters (ALP) and fabricated stories (books I:5-8 & II:3); while the children (Shaun, Shem and Iseult) are in and out of the family tavern/home all day taking their lessons (book II:2) and playing about with their friends (Shem's closing dream, book II:1); HCE, as proprietor, defends himself with a self-deprecating apologia before his intoxicated collapse late night (book II:3). HCE dreams on his tavern floor (book II:4); then dreams in his bed (books III:1-3); before intercourse with his wife ALP (book III:4). HCE & ALP's lovemaking dissolution dream (book IV) to awaken to a new day, Joycean Nirvana is attained by ALP's (& HCE's) unification with the Unmanifest (Creation, Incarnate conception) and Reincarnation (the baton has been passed on again), awaiting Joyce's God "thunderclap" at the beginning of FW's "book I".
FW is aural (oral) history like Homer's Odessey and Celtic folktales - when one pronounces (phonology) FW's words (aloud) there are more languages than just English; also, when one reads (morphology) FW's words almost all the words are "portmanteaus / neologisms" which gives each of FW's "poly-syncretic" words many meanings (universal impermanence, Heisenberg uncertainty/obscurity), each FW syncretic sentence dozens of possible messages, each FW syncretic paragraph hundreds of possible readings, Joyce's rendering of a more expansive English language and multiplicating universal book with coalescing syncretic themes/stories (that responds/opens to each reader's inquiries). Joyce schooled in Christian Jesuit metaphysics (pushed down into the mindfulness of human consciousness) breathes in the spirit of expansive Celtic (Irish) democratic community tavern life where man's stories of life are told. Tavern life teaches the evolution of Joyce's ten God "thunderclaps" (one hundred lettered words) pushing man's evolution forward from cave man's tales to modern tv media tales. Inside the tavern man learns of the purely human (animal) fall, taken down by another human(s) - like animal taken down on the African savanna. A granular reading of FW can render FW as an updated John Milton's Paradise Lost (regurgitated knowledge from the tree, to affirm man's damnation); however, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859 and Joyce in FW book II clearly walks Shaun, Shem and Iseult through their earthly evolutionary lifetime travails, our mortality is a consequence of Life's evolution. Every page of FW speaks to man's evolution (unconscious biological, conscious social, aspirational personal) and to Life recirculating (West meets Dzogchen East a "meeting of metaphysical minds") that binds humanity together into the future. Dzogchen (beyond all dualistic polarities) the heart of human consciousness - Joyce's underlying (subcutaneous) arguments refute the "Western curse of metaphysical/mythological damnation", the curse does not exist in the Eastern mind. Like "counting the number of angels on the head of a pin" (Aquinas 1270) Joyce provides a granular/expansive reading of FW as a "defense against all Western adversity" for our conscious and unconscious Western travails. HCE's angst is caused by his community that imposes a Western curse (damnation) upon him that man is not guilty of...to experience Joycean Nirvana, a defense against this man-made guilt is required - for as Zoroaster revealed cosmogonic dualism, evil is mixed with good in man's universal everyday travails (even the Dalai Lama must defend Nirvana rigorously from the most populous authoritarian state in human history).
Joyce's FW celebrates the Joys of Christian/Buddhist diversity of humanity (expansive human consciousness: Gnostic Norwegian Captain, Shem, Archdruid), Brahma (Finnegan, HCE, Shaun), Divine Women (ALP, Iseult, Nuvoletta), his family - and the Sufferings of the inescapable "evil" of Shiva (Buckley), the debilitating harmful sterile intrusive authoritarian institutionalizing damnation (MaMaLuJo, St. Patrick) by Augustine, the manufactured clerical corruption identified by Luther (since 367 AD) and the burdens of "survival of the fittest" anxiety (modern commerce) met with a Dzogchen Buddhist stance. The (innocent infant) Norwegian Captain (Krishna, HCE), occasionally defensive (Shiva, HCE), though concretized (Brahma, HCE) by community family life (MaMaLuJo) - through spirits (drink) HCE can access his spirituality (dreams) and through spiritual (cutting through) love-making with ALP (direct approach) can access (their Krishnas) unification with the Unmanifest. Joyce was a Prophet who consumed Man's conscious and spiritual "thoughts and dreams, history and gossip, efforts and failings" - to reveal the joys (Nirvana) and sufferings (Saṃsāra) of Mankind.
Joyce's FW message: Christian/Buddhist omniscient compassion (Christ/Krishna) is eternally joyful and recirculating. Affirmative family (HCE/Brahma, ALP/Divine woman & children) existentiality: life's biological evolution (sex), modern survival (money), constraining community (Dharma, social evolution) are constantly assaulted by inescapable "aggressive insidious vile" corrupt soul(less/sucking) ossified demonic antipathetic attacks. Joycean Nirvana is attained via the Christian/Buddhist affirmative middle way, "beyond polar opposites" the path of Christ/Buddha.
JCB
November 24, 2007
Hugh Kenner, you are my favorite literary critic ever!
December 3, 2018
Of the four commentaries that I read on Ulysses, this was my favorite. It is also one that Heffernan recommended as "essential."
Although Kenner covers the entire scope of Ulysses in roughly the same order as the material in the book, he does not attempt to summarize the chapters or linearly track the story in a systematic way. Instead, he runs through Ulysses with a light touch, never spending too much time on any one section and getting through the entire book in a brisk 160 pages.
The result is a commentary that focuses at two extremes. On the one hand, Kenner investigates the minutiae of Joyce's writing. He highlights tiny details that certainly would have escaped my notice on a first read-through (and probably subsequent ones). On the other hand, he uses those details at the macroscopic level to illustrate that, despite the surface impression of Ulysses as a huge overstuffed chaotic mess, Joyce was actually ruthlessly disciplined in piecing together every scrap of Dublin on June 16, 1904.
For example, Kenner says that initially it may appear that there are two different narrative voices in Ulysses: the internal stream-of-consciousness of the characters, and a more traditional disembodied narrator that describes the action. But Kenner explains that even the apparent "disembodied narrator" sees the world only through the eyes of the character; the narrator describes only information that the character would directly have been interested in and able to notice.
Thus, early in the story, the disembodied narrator states:
I never would have connected those dots on my own, and this commentary is filled with that kind of careful analysis, tying together obscure details across hundreds of pages to demonstrate bigger picture themes. I love reading Kenner putting together the pieces of Joyce's puzzle.
While I enjoyed this commentary the most, my only small caveat is that I would not rely on this as your *only* guide to Ulysses. Because Kenner tends to bounce between minutiae and big picture, without spending much time in the "middle distance" between, I don't think this is enough to help someone get through the book. But it definitely greatly enhanced my reading experience.
Although Kenner covers the entire scope of Ulysses in roughly the same order as the material in the book, he does not attempt to summarize the chapters or linearly track the story in a systematic way. Instead, he runs through Ulysses with a light touch, never spending too much time on any one section and getting through the entire book in a brisk 160 pages.
The result is a commentary that focuses at two extremes. On the one hand, Kenner investigates the minutiae of Joyce's writing. He highlights tiny details that certainly would have escaped my notice on a first read-through (and probably subsequent ones). On the other hand, he uses those details at the macroscopic level to illustrate that, despite the surface impression of Ulysses as a huge overstuffed chaotic mess, Joyce was actually ruthlessly disciplined in piecing together every scrap of Dublin on June 16, 1904.
For example, Kenner says that initially it may appear that there are two different narrative voices in Ulysses: the internal stream-of-consciousness of the characters, and a more traditional disembodied narrator that describes the action. But Kenner explains that even the apparent "disembodied narrator" sees the world only through the eyes of the character; the narrator describes only information that the character would directly have been interested in and able to notice.
Thus, early in the story, the disembodied narrator states:
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. . . . Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid.Kenner notes that the narrator follows Stephen's focus, providing specific details about "the fraying edge" on the "shiny black coat-sleeve," but only the most generalized description of the sea as "a dull green mass of liquid." Kenner then makes the connection that, 500 or 600 pages later in the novel, we will learn that Stephen had broken his glasses the previous day. Thus, the specific detail provided about the close-up "threadbare cuffedge" and comparatively blurry description of the distant water actually tracks Stephen's limited nearsighted vision without glasses.
I never would have connected those dots on my own, and this commentary is filled with that kind of careful analysis, tying together obscure details across hundreds of pages to demonstrate bigger picture themes. I love reading Kenner putting together the pieces of Joyce's puzzle.
While I enjoyed this commentary the most, my only small caveat is that I would not rely on this as your *only* guide to Ulysses. Because Kenner tends to bounce between minutiae and big picture, without spending much time in the "middle distance" between, I don't think this is enough to help someone get through the book. But it definitely greatly enhanced my reading experience.
August 2, 2021
An OK gloss on the conceptual angles and chapter dynamics in ulysses, mostly conventional. Kenner's hot takes on the novel in Colder Eye and Joyce's Voices appear to be his only hot takes (idiosyncracies in Joyce' realism, the Bloomisms of Eumaeus, etc), and the rest appears to be eloquent explanations of the standard guides to the chapters you'd find in an annotated edition or standard commentary. Worth reading anyhow, to my estimate
January 10, 2020
nice to read a book about ulysses that isnt five hundred pages long and which appreciated the humor of mr joyce. mr kenner is a funny chap himself and i will read this again and again til the end of my days.
October 10, 2022
Probably the best single-volume introduction to Ulysses and Joyce in general, at least that I’ve read. Kenner’s critical insight into the novel as a novel, not simply as an encyclopedic text of references and allusions, is one that completely transformed my reading of Ulysses.
July 4, 2019
Indispensable, and extraordinarily engaging.
August 26, 2022
Great work.
September 19, 2023
Keen Kenner Insights for Ken.
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July 18, 2025Informative, if a bit unfocused.
July 25, 2014
Kenner's focused and scintillating analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses is primarily devoted to an extremely close reading of the text, reconstructing the events, and analyzing how the language and style function to create the impression and experience of the book's universe. Even after several close readings of Ulysses with various commentaries, there were still some big surprises for me in this volume, simply on the level of the book's action, and for that alone the book is worth a read for serious Joyce enthusiasts.
I wish Kenner had spent more time - or any time, really - on the book's meaning. His analysis is somewhat narrow in scope, but the key difficulties that occupy my relationship to the book are on the level of what we are to make of its ambiguous actions. Central questions that Kenner does not address include "What is the sense in which the mythopoetic patterns of Homer govern the action in the book, and what was Joyce trying to say in using them? What is the sense of Stephen's breakthrough in the brothel, and how are we to take it? What degree of atonement occurred between Bloom and Dedalus? Why were the key moments of connection between the two central characters intentionally buried in obscure language?"
These questions don't seem to concern Kenner, but they concern me, rather more than knowing that the catechismic method of the Ithaca chapter was inspired in part by a popular Q&A column in Dublin daily newspapers.
I didn't know that it was possible, but at times I think Kenner actually over-thinks Ulysses, as when he theorizes that Dedalus has punched Buck Mulligan off-stage on the basis of his complaints of a hurt hand. Clearly this would fly directly in the face of everything we know about Dedalus and the weapons that he will allow himself: silence, exile, cunning.
So this impressive book does not precisely focus its considerable energies in the directions of greatest interest to this reader. It's still probably the best analysis of Ulysses that I've read. Probably worth noting in passing that despite the cover description, this book is in no sense an "introduction," and depends on thorough familiarity with the novel.
I wish Kenner had spent more time - or any time, really - on the book's meaning. His analysis is somewhat narrow in scope, but the key difficulties that occupy my relationship to the book are on the level of what we are to make of its ambiguous actions. Central questions that Kenner does not address include "What is the sense in which the mythopoetic patterns of Homer govern the action in the book, and what was Joyce trying to say in using them? What is the sense of Stephen's breakthrough in the brothel, and how are we to take it? What degree of atonement occurred between Bloom and Dedalus? Why were the key moments of connection between the two central characters intentionally buried in obscure language?"
These questions don't seem to concern Kenner, but they concern me, rather more than knowing that the catechismic method of the Ithaca chapter was inspired in part by a popular Q&A column in Dublin daily newspapers.
I didn't know that it was possible, but at times I think Kenner actually over-thinks Ulysses, as when he theorizes that Dedalus has punched Buck Mulligan off-stage on the basis of his complaints of a hurt hand. Clearly this would fly directly in the face of everything we know about Dedalus and the weapons that he will allow himself: silence, exile, cunning.
So this impressive book does not precisely focus its considerable energies in the directions of greatest interest to this reader. It's still probably the best analysis of Ulysses that I've read. Probably worth noting in passing that despite the cover description, this book is in no sense an "introduction," and depends on thorough familiarity with the novel.
Read
October 10, 2014A set of close readings of the text of Ulysses -- I wouldn't recommend as an introduction as Kenner's writing requires familiarity with the source and tends toward detail work rather than offering large framing arguments for the text. The chapter on Joyce's "aesthetics of delay" was, to me, the book's finest. The appended section "Critical Sequels" is also a handy resource for a quick rundown of Ulysses's critical reception history, particularly for mapping large turns such as the shift away from the mythological framework (Kenner rightly notes that "so elaborately contrived did the Homeric correspondences seem in Gilbert's hands -- he made everything depend on them -- that they have never regained the centrality they deserve"), the biographical turn required by Ellmann's publication, and so forth.
November 28, 2014
Don't read James Joyce's Ulysses without Hugh Kenner. I mean, in addition to an annotated version of Joyce's, I recommend reading Kenner. He was the human interpreter I needed to appreciate the many devices conjured by "the arranger".
February 24, 2023
One of the best books on Ulysses, from a truly great literary critic.
December 30, 2012
I read this ages ago during my James Joyce madness. Kenner got me interested in Ezra Pound as well.
December 18, 2014
A decent guide to the terrifying monstrosity that is "Ulysses."
March 10, 2016
This really helped me to understand the book.
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