Ulysses by Joyce

Ref: James Joyce (1922). Ulysses. Not So Noble Books.

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Summary

• “Ulysses”, written in a “stream of consciousness style” by James Joyce, follows main characters Stephen Dedalus, a young, up and coming poet recently returned from Paris on the death of his mother, and Leopold Bloom, a 38-yo advertiser with Hungarian-Jewish ancestry, as they move around Dublin on the 16th of June, 1904. Much of the book establishes the late-night union between Stephen, proverbial son, and Leopold, proverbial father. The book ends with the internal thoughts of Leopold’s wife, Molly, a 33-yo singer.

• Themes: Sex; religion, particularly Christianity, Judaism (antisemitism) and atheism; family; father and son, Irish identity; literature; history.

• Setting: Dublin Ireland, 16-17 Jun, 1904.

• Main Characters: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom.

  • Bloom as a Christ figure and Molly as the Virgin Mary

• Parallax: The effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ or change when viewed from different perspectives (Oxford).

• Metempsychosis: The transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death (Wiki).

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1 Telemachus

• Overview: Stephen Dedalus, Buck Mulligan, and Englishman Haines start the day at Dedalus’ home, Martello Tower. After breakfast, they walk to the bay to wash up, promising to meet at a local bar called the ship later that morning. 

• Odyssey: Unknown.

• General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI).

• “Oh, don’t we have a merry time, drinking whiskey, beer, and whine.”

• “The obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.”

• “Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.”

• “His proudest boast. I paid my way.”

• “We are a generous people but we must also be just… I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”

• “Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the Jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.”

• “The ineluctable modality of the audible.”

• “Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned.”

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2 Nestor

• Overview: Stephen teaches history to a boy’s class, releasing them for field sports while holding one back for additional lessons. Stephen receives his pay from the school master, Deasy, and the two talk about foot and mouth disease. Deasy blames many of the world’s problems on the Jews- “the Jews have sinned against the light.”

• Odyssey: Unknown.

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3 Proteus

• Overview: Stephen wonders down the beach of Sandymount Strand, contemplating his day, and watching a few people from afar. He considers visiting his Aunt Sara and imagines how the visit might unfold. He continues on, thinking of his time in Paris (where he was studying to be a doctor) and his return to Dublin at the bequest of his father due to his mother’s coming death. Stephen had refused to pray at her bedside. Stephen stumbles across a dead dog, and watches a couple with a live dog. Stephen scribbles a poem before leaving.

• Odyssey: Proteus- the shape shifting God; from symbolic transformations of imagery depicted throughout the chapter and, from episodes 1-3, Stephen as a Telemachus type figure (from sparknotes, otherwise this is entirely unclear from the reading). 

• Telemachus was the son of Odysseus and Penelope. When Palamedes visited Odysseus’ Island of Ithaca to enlist Odysseus in the war effort against the Trojans, Odysseus had originally played dumb. Palamedes placed Telemachus in the path of Odysseus’ cart and Odysseus immediately dropped the plow’s handles and rescued the baby, thereby proving to Palamedes that Odysseus was fit for war (Troy by Fry).

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4 Calypso

• Overview: At home, Leopold Bloom feeds his cat and walks over to the butcher’s shop to buy kidney for breakfast. He rushes out quickly after hoping to watch the body of the woman in front of him in line as she walks home. Back at home, Bloom finds three letters- one each for him and his wife, Molly, from their daughter Milly, and another from Molly’s concert manager, Blazes Boylan, addressed to Molly, who Bloom thinks is having an affair with Molly. Bloom reads his letter from Milly who tells of a new boyfriend, Bannon, which makes Bloom think of his son, Rudy.

• Odyssey: Episode 4 begins the story of “Odysseus” with Bloom leaving his house and wandering around the city. His wife, Molly, is compared to Calypso, who Odysseus is enamored to during his voyage (from sparknotes, otherwise unclear from the text).

• “Metempsychosis”

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5 The Lotus Eaters

• Overview: Bloom walks through Dublin to attend the 11am funeral of Paddy Dignam. He stops at the post office and picks up a letter addressed to his pseudonym, Henry Flower, from his romantic pen pal, Martha Clifford, who wants to meet him in person. He talks to a man named McCoy and then reads Martha’s letter under an arch. Throughout the episode, Bloom lusts after women- both physically and mentally. He stops by a chemist to pick up lotion and soap for his wife, Molly, and then considers stopping at a public bath. The episode ends with Bloom excitedly thinking of himself naked in a tub, with his penis limp and floating in the water like a flower.

• Odyssey: Odysseus men eat the flower of the Lotus Eaters and become tired, forgetting about their quest to return home. The connection in Ulysses being the lazy wandering of Bloom, both in thought and reality, as he moves across Dublin. 

• “No roses without thorns.”

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6 Hades

• Overview: Bloom joins Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, and Simon Dedalus (Stephen’s father) in a carriage enroute Dignam’s funeral. Bloom considers Molly’s later meeting with Boylan when, suddenly, they pass Boylan in the street. The men chat about death and suicide and Bloom ponders the deaths of his son and father (Bloom’s father committed suicide). They attend Dignam’s funeral service and walk with the procession to the graveyard, where Dignam is buried.

• Odyssey: The theme of death (Hades).

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7 Aeolus

• Overview: Bloom enters the printing office of “Freemen” and is asked by the printer to secure funding for the advertisement of Bloom’s colleague, Keyes, a local liquor merchant. Bloom notifies Keyes by phone for funding. Bloom bumps into people and people bump into Bloom throughout the episode. Stephen enters the printing office and gives Deasy’s letter on foot and mouth disease to the printer, Crawford, who agrees to print it. Crawford asks Stephen to write something for the paper, after which Stephen ponders how he is viewed as a “poet” by others in the room. Stephen recommends they adjourn to a pub while Bloom confront Crawford about extending the Keyes ad by 2 months instead of 3 and is told no.

• Odyssey: The episode parallels the aftermath of Odysseus’ visit to Aeolus, the god of winds, in which one of Odysseus’ men disobeys him and opens a bag of wind, which blows them off course. The wind in Ulysses being the windy rhetoric used in journalism and oratory. Several characters in the episode are “blown from their course” as they stray from their individual goals and missions (from sparknotes, otherwise unclear from the text).

• “What opera is like a railway line? The rose of Castille. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel.”

• “Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.” “I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.”

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8 Lestrygonians

• Overview: Bloom wanders through Dublin, stopping at a candy shop, a cake store, and by his old place of employment, Hedy’s. He chats with several people including an old fling- Josie Breen, which makes him ponder the pregnancy of Mina Purefoy. He routinely considers if his wife Molly and her concert manager, Boylan, are together throughout the episode. Hungry, Bloom enters Burton restaurant but leaves after seeing many “ill-mannered” men eating. He has a light snack at Davy Byrnes, instead. After chatting with an acquaintance, Flynn, Bloom leaves for the National Library to look up the Keye’s advertisement. He spots Boylan and quickly hides in the national museum. 

• Odyssey: Food pervades the episode and connects with several themes, which parallels Odysseus’ visit to the island of cannibals. Bloom sees people hastily and grossly eating meat, which deters him from meat and he chooses a vegetarian option instead (from sparknotes, otherwise unclear from the text).

• “Parallax”.

• “God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burnt offering, druids altars.”

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9 Scylla and Charybdis

• Overview: Stephen presents his “Hamlet Theory” to several critics, essayists, and poets at the Dublin National Library. Stephen hypothesizes Shakespeare writing himself as the ghost of Hamlet’s father as opposed to Hamlet himself, and that Shakespeare actual dead son, Hamnet, is Hamlet, with Shakespeare’s adulterous wife, Ann Hathaway, playing the role of unfaithful Gertrude, Hamlet’s wife. The poets disapprove of Stephen’s theory and make it clear that Stephen is not included in the inner circle of important Dublin poets. Buck arrives, chiding Stephen for not meeting at “the Ship” earlier. A library attendant leaves to assist Bloom with locating the Keyes advertisement. Stephen admits he doesn’t believe his own theory. Stephen and Buck leave for the bar, separating in the hallway to each side as Bloom passes between them.

• Odyssey: Parallels Odysseus’ sailing between the Scylla, the six headed monster and Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool as characters navigate two extremes throughout the episode.

• “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

• “To a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife.”

• “It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.”

• “Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the Madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in this life. Paternity may be a legal fiction.”

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10 The Wandering Rocks

• Overview: 19 different characters provide their simultaneous views (parallax) as they wander around Dublin. Father Conmee seeks get the Dignam boy admitted to school for free; Corny Kelleher examines a coffinlid; a sailor sings sons and asks for money; Dedalus kids chat from home; Boylan picks up food from a shopgirl; Stephen meets his voice teacher who tries to persuade him to pursue a musical career; Boylan’s secretary; Ned Lambert walks JJ O’Molloy and Reverend Hugh C. Love around Saint Mary’s Abbey; Tom Rochford shows off an invention; Bloom purchases the book “Sweets of Sin” for Molly; a cavalcade crosses Dublin; Tom Kernan; Stephen chats with Dilly, his sister; Bob Cowley talks about his debt; Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, and John Nolan take up money for Dignam’s children; Mulligan and Haines sit in a coffeeshop discussing Stephen; Dignam’s son, Patrick Jr thinks of his dead father; the cavalcade passes most people throughout the episode.

• Odyssey: Parallel’s the “wandering rocks” of the odyssey, which were boulders that could capsize a ship. Joyce uses “textual traps” as “wandering boulders” (from sparknotes, otherwise unclear from the text).

• “Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

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11 Sirens

• Overview: Several characters, Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Goulding, Cowley, and others meet, drink, and chat at the bar of the Ormond hotel. Bloom follows Boylan into the hotel’s lobby and joins them at the bar. Bloom, hearing Boylan leave, is sad at Boylan’s impending meeting with his wife, Molly. The men take turns singing karaoke while Bloom pens a flirtatious letter to Martha. Bloom leaves as the song “Croppy Boy” is sung, which ends in applause. Bloom wanders into the city.

• Odyssey: Parallel’s the Sirens of the Odyssey in which Odysseus has his men tie him to the bow of the ship to hear voices of the Sirens. Accordingly, the episode focuses on music and the sirens are the beautiful, flirtatious barmaids and in the songs of the men singing.

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12 Cyclops

• Overview: An unknown narrator meets Joe Hynes on the street and they drink at Barney Kiernan’s pub. Several characters, including a “citizen” come into and out of the bar, making small talk with the narrator and Hynes. Bloom, waiting to see Martin Cunningham, arrives at the pub and they all chat about capital punishment, insurance, politics, sports. More enter, including O’Molloy and Ned Lambert. The citizen makes antisemitic and xenophobic remarks aimed at Bloom, who ignores him, and shortly after, leaves to find Cunningham. Those present gossip about Bloom. Cunningham, Power, and Crofton arrive and join in on the Bloom gossip. Bloom re-enters to find Cunningham. As the bar is getting belligerent, Bloom, Cunningham, Power, and Crofton leave. The citizen comes out yelling at Bloom and throws a biscuit tin at the car.

• Odyssey: Parallel’s the capture of Odysseus and his men in the cave of Cyclops, represented primarily by the citizen. Bloom considers two sides of the issues presented instead of taking a single side (two eyes vs. one eye).

• “Sinn Fein!”

• “But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness.”

• “Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech.”

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13 Nausicaa

• Overview: Bloom stands on the beach across from three women- Cissy Caffrey, Edy Boardman, and Gerty MacDowell and their kids, twin toddlers and a small boy. Gerty is beautiful and she senses Bloom’s eyes on her, displaying her ankles and her hair for Bloom to see. As Cissy and Edy watch the fireworks, Gerty shows off for Bloom, who masturbates under his jacket as he watches her. Gerty walks away with a hobble (handicap) which causes Bloom to feel shame. Bloom discovers that his watch has stopped at 430 and ponders if that is the moment that his wife and Boylan lay together. Bloom decides against going home and naps on the beach. 

• Odyssey: Gerty corresponds to Princess Nausicaa who, in the Odyssey, discovers Odysseus asleep and tends to him.

• “Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent.”

• “Love, a woman’s birthright.”

• “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.”

• “Chance. We’ll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel young again.”

• “He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey. Her women’s instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him” (Gerty and Bloom). 

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14 Oxen of the Sun

• Overview: In a representation of the “evolution” or change in the English language, Joyce writes this chapter in dozens of different styles, beginning with old English and ending with modern English. Bloom attends the maternity hospital to check on Mina Purefoy (who gives birth). Nurse Callan and Dixon, a medical student, show Bloom inside where Lenehan, Crothers, Stephen, Punch Costello, and other medical students are drinking beers. Although Bloom continues not drinking, the group chats about sex and birth and becomes rowdy and are asked often to quiet down. They leave the hospital and head to Burkes pub; Bloom later joins. At the bar, they are kicked out and Stephen convinces his friend Lynch to head to the brothel district. This was the hardest chapter of the book to understand.

• Odyssey: Parallels Odysseus’s visit to the island of Helios on which Odysseus warns his men not to touch the cattle that are sacred to Helios, but the men slaughter the cattle for food while Odysseus sleeps and they are all killed, save Odysseus. In Ulysses, the drunken group profanes many sacred items- birth, rape, sex, death, and imagery of cattle is spread throughout the episode. 

• “Times ruins build eternity’s mansions. What means this? Desire’s wind blasts the thorn tree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman’s womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away.”

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15 Circe

• Overview: Bloom follows Stephen and Lynch to the brothel district, losing them in the process. Bloom has a snack at a local diner and hallucinates about being confronted over various sexual offenses by his parents, Molly, and Gerty. Bloom hallucinates that he is on public trial for all his indiscretions. The hallucination ends as Bloom begins talking to prostitute, Zoe Higgins, who tells him that Stephen and Lynch are inside. Bloom hallucinates that he is a national hero and is elected leader of the new “Bloomusalem.” This hallucination ends with Bloom being accused of being a woman by Buck; he gives birth to 8 children. Bloom enters the brothel to find Stephen and Lynch and has another hallucination, in which he is made a prostitute, defiled, and dies. Stephen, now drunk, pays the brothel, and then hallucinates that his mother has appeared as a ghost through the floor. He breaks a chandelier trying to “shoo” the ghost out of the room. The police are called and Stephen is punched by a local cop. Bloom rescues Stephen from being arrested. 

• Odyssey: Unknown.

• “We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I; He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.”

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16 Eumaeus

• Overview: Bloom walks with Stephen to the “Cabman’s shelter”, a local diner, for a coffee to sober up, chiding Stephen throughout the episode on the dangers of prostitutes, drink, wasted money, bad friends, etc. They chat with an Italian sailor who has been all over the world and discuss various topics. Stephen doesn’t have a place to stay so Bloom invites him back to his house. They walk arm in arm through the streets while singing and chatting about music towards Blooms house.

• Odyssey: Parallel’s the return of Odysseus to Ithaca (home to Molly) and Odysseus’, disguised as an old man, revealing himself to his son, Telemachus, at the hut of Eumaeus, a local swineherd.

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17 Ithaca

• Overview: Stephen and Bloom chat through a Socratic dialogue Q and A consisting of 309 questions. Bloom, locked out, jumps the fence to his house and enters through the kitchen, lighting a candle and opening the door for Stephen. Bloom pours cocoa and they talk for hours. They both urinate outside, shake hands, and say goodbye as the morning bell rings. Bloom re-enters the house, goes through his drawers of papers and then disrobes next to Molly. He sees signs of Boylan everywhere. He resigns himself to the thought of Boylan being the latest of Molly’s dozens of sexual suitors. He kisses Molly on the but and falls asleep with his head at the foot of the bed. Molly wakes up and considers that they haven’t had intercourse in 10 years. 

• Odyssey: (Once Stephen leaves) parallels the return of Odysseus to his court and the slaying of his wife’s suitors and his reveal to his wife, Penelope.

• “Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to Christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Poitus, son of Odysseus, sent by Pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac McCarthy (died 266).

• “He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction on the converse domain of interindividual relations.”

• “The lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.”

• “What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman.”

• “Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellistic dependence: her luminary reflection: her consistency under all her phases, rising, and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.”

• “The advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummin).”

• “Womb? Weary? He rests. He has travelled.”

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18 Penelope

• Overview: Molly’s internal monologue covering nearly 40 pages without break. Bloom asks for breakfast in bed. Molly considers her sexual escapades with Boylan, her once great relationship with Bloom, her old admirers and sexual escapades, Blooms strange undergarment fetish, how much prettier women’s breast are compared to men’s penises, all of Blooms strange ideas, her childhood in Gibraltar, her first love letter from Lt. Mulvey, her beautiful daughter Milly, Blooms uneasy relationship with money, how old Stephen might be now, her need to lose weight and read more, why Bloom won’t embrace her anymore, how much better the world would be if women ran it, and how happy she was when Bloom proposed to her. 

• Odyssey: Unknown.

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Characters

• Leopold Bloom: A 38-yo advertising canvasser in Dublin. Bloom was raised in Dublin by his Hungarian Jewish father, Rudolph, and his Irish Catholic mother, Ellen. He enjoys reading and thinking about science and inventions and explaining his knowledge to others. Bloom is compassionate and curious and loves music. He is preoccupied by his estrangement from his wife, Molly.

• Marion (Molly) Bloom: Leopold Bloom’s wife. Molly Bloom is 33-yo, plump with dark coloring, good-looking, and flirtatious. She is not well-educated, but she is nevertheless clever and opinionated. She is a professional singer, raised by her Irish father, Major Brian Tweedy, in Gibraltar. Molly is impatient with Bloom, especially about his refusal to be intimate with her since the death of their son, Rudy, eleven years ago.

• Stephen Dedalus: An aspiring poet in his early twenties. Stephen is intelligent and extremely well-read, and he likes music. He seems to exist more for himself, in a cerebral way, than as a member of a community or even the group of medical students that he associates with. Stephen was extremely religious as a child, but now he struggles with issues of faith and doubt in the wake of his mother’s death, which occurred less than a year ago.

• Malachi (Buck) Mulligan: A medical student and a friend of Stephen. Buck Mulligan is plump and well-read, and manages to ridicule nearly everything. He is well-liked by nearly everyone for his bawdy and witty jokes except Stephen, Simon, and Bloom.

• Haines: A folklore student at Oxford who is particularly interested in studying Irish people and culture. Haines is often unwittingly condescending. He has been staying at the Martello tower where Stephen and Buck live.

• Hugh (“Blazes”) Boylan: The manager for Molly’s upcoming concert in Belfast. Blazes Boylan is well-known and well-liked around town, though he seems somewhat sleazy, especially toward women. Boylan has become interested in Molly, and they commence an affair during the afternoon of the novel.

• Millicent (Milly) Bloom: Molly and Leopold Bloom’s 15-yo daughter, who does not actually appear in Ulysses. The Blooms recently sent Milly to live in Mullingar and learn photography. Milly is blond and pretty and has become interested in boys- she is dating Alec Bannon in Mullingar.

• Simon Dedalus: Stephen Dedalus’s father. Simon Dedalus grew up in Cork, moved to Dublin, and was a fairly successful man until recently. Other men look up to him, even though his home life has been in disarray since his wife died. Simon has a good singing voice and a talent for funny stories, and he might have capitalized on these assets if not for his drinking habit. Simon is extremely critical of Stephen.

• A.E. (George Russell): A.E. is the pseudonym of George Russell, a famous poet of the Irish Literary Revival who is at the center of Irish literary circles—circles that do not include Stephen Dedalus. He is deeply interested in esoteric mysticism. Other men consult A.E. for wisdom as if he were an oracle.

• Richard Best: A librarian at the National Library. Best is enthusiastic and agreeable, though most of his own contributions to the Hamlet conversation in Episode Nine are points of received wisdom.

• Edy Boardman: One of Gerty MacDowell’s friends. Gerty’s uppity demeanor annoys Edy, who attempts to deflate Gerty with jibes.

• Josie (née Powell) and Denis Breen: Josie Powell and Bloom were interested in each other when they were younger. Josie was good-looking and flirtatious. After Bloom married Molly, Josie married Denis. Denis Breen is slightly insane and seems paranoid. Looking after her “dotty” husband has taken its toll on Josie, who now seems haggard.

• Cissy, Jacky, and Tommy Caffrey: Cissy Caffrey is one of Gerty MacDowell’s best friends. She is something of a tomboy and quite frank. She looks after her younger toddler brothers, Jacky and Tommy.

• The citizen: An older Irish patriot who champions the Nationalist cause. Though the citizen seems to work for the cause in no official capacity, others look to him for news and opinions. He was formerly an athlete in Irish sports. He is belligerent and xenophobic.

• Martha Clifford: A woman with whom Bloom corresponds under the pseudonym Henry Flower. Martha’s letters are strewn with spelling mistakes, and she is sexually daring in only a pedestrian way.

• Bella Cohen: A conniving brothel-mistress. Bella Cohen is large and slightly mannish, with dark coloring. She is somewhat concerned about respectability, and has a son at Oxford, whose tuition is paid by one of her customers.

• Martin Cunningham: A leader among Bloom’s circle of friends. Martin Cunningham can be sympathetic toward others, and he sticks up for Bloom at various points during the day, yet he still treats Bloom as an outsider. He has a face that resembles Shakespeare’s.

• Garrett Deasy: Headmaster of the boys’ school where Stephen teaches. Deasy is a Protestant from the north of Ireland, and he is respectful of the English government. Deasy is condescending to Stephen and not a good listener. His overwrought letter to the editor about foot-and-mouth disease among cattle is the object of mockery among Dublin men for the rest of the day.

• Dilly, Katey, Boody, and Maggy Dedalus: Stephen’s younger sisters. They try to keep the Dedalus household running after their mother’s death. Dilly seems to have aspirations, such as learning French.

• Patrick Dignam, Mrs. Dignam, and Patrick Dignam, Jr.: Patrick Dignam is an acquaintance of Bloom who passed away very recently, apparently from drinking. His funeral is today, and Bloom and others get together to raise some money for the widow Dignam and her children, who were left with almost nothing after Paddy used his life insurance to pay off a debt.

• Ben Dollard: A man known around Dublin for his superior bass voice. Ben Dollard’s business and career went under a while ago. He seems good-natured but is perhaps rattled by a past drinking habit.

• John Eglinton: An essayist who spends time at the National Library. John Eglinton is affronted by Stephen’s youthful self-confidence and doubtful of Stephen’s Hamlet theory.

• Richie, Sara (Sally), and Walter Goulding: Richie Goulding is Stephen Dedalus’s uncle; he was Stephen’s mother, May’s, brother. Richie is a law clerk, who has been less able to work recently because of a bad back—a fact that makes him an object of ridicule for Simon Dedalus. Richie and Sara’s son, Walter, is “skeweyed” and has a stutter.

• Zoe Higgins: A prostitute in Bella Cohen’s brothel. Zoe is outgoing and good at teasing.

• Joe Hynes: A reporter for the Dublin newspaper who seems to be without money often—he borrowed three pounds from Bloom and has not paid him back. Hynes does not know Bloom well, and he appears to be good friends with the citizen in Episode Twelve.

• Corny Kelleher: An undertaker’s assistant who is friendly with the police.

• Mina Kennedy and Lydia Douce: The barmaids at the Ormond hotel. Mina and Lydia are flirtatious and friendly to the men who come into the bar, though they tend to be scornful of the opposite sex when they talk together. Miss Douce, who is bronze-haired, seems to be the more outgoing of the two, and she has a crush on Blazes Boylan. Miss Kennedy, who is golden-haired, is more reserved.

• Ned Lambert: A friend of Simon Dedalus and other men in Dublin. Ned Lambert is often found joking and laughing. He works in a seed and grain warehouse downtown, in what used to be St. Mary’s Abbey.

• Lenehan: A racing editor at the Dublin newspaper, though his tip, Sceptre, loses the Gold Cup horserace. Lenehan is a jokester and flirtatious with women. He is mocking of Bloom but respectful of Simon and Stephen Dedalus.

• Lynch: A medical student and old friend of Stephen (he also appears in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Lynch is used to hearing Stephen’s pretentious and overwhelming aesthetic theories, and he is familiar with Stephen’s stubbornness. He is seeing Kitty Ricketts.

• Thomas W. Lyster: A librarian at the National Library in Dublin, and a Quaker. Lyster is the most solicitous of Stephen’s listeners in Episode Nine.

• Gerty MacDowell: A woman in her early twenties from a lower-middle-class family. Gerty suffers from a permanent limp, possibly from a bicycle accident. She fastidiously attends to her clothing and personal beauty regimen, and she hopes to fall in love and marry. She rarely allows herself to think about her disability.

• John Henry Menton: A solicitor in Dublin who employed Paddy Dignam. When Bloom and Molly were first courting, Menton was a rival for Molly’s affections. He is disdainful of Bloom.

• Episode Twelve’s Nameless Narrator: The unnamed narrator of Episode Twelve is currently a debt collector, though this is the most recent of many different jobs. He enjoys feeling like he is “in the know” and has gotten most of his gossip about the Blooms from his friend “Pisser” Burke, who knew them when they lived at the City Arms Hotel.

• City Councilor Nannetti: A head printer for the Dublin newspaper, and a member of Parliament. Nannetti is of mixed Italian and Irish heritage.

• J. J. O’Molloy: A lawyer who is now out of work and money. O’Molloy is thwarted in his attempts to borrow money from friends today. He sticks up for Bloom in Barney Kiernan’s pub in Episode Twelve.

• Jack Power: A friend of Simon Dedalus and Martin Cunningham and other men around town. Power possibly works in law enforcement. He is not very nice to Bloom.

• Kitty Ricketts: One of the prostitutes working in Bella Cohen’s brothel. Kitty seems to have a relationship with Lynch and has spent part of the day with him. She is thin, and her clothing reflects her upper-class aspirations.

• Florry Talbot: One of the prostitutes in Bella Cohen’s brothel. Florry is plump and seems slow but eager to please.

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Terminology

• Adamantine: Unbreakable. 

• Apodosis: The main (consequent) clause of a conditional sentence. 

• Bard: A poet, traditionally one reciting epics.

• Blarney: Flattery, Misleading talk, or non-sense. 

• Brogue: A marked accent, especially Irish or Scottish, when speaking English.

• Catamite: A boy kept for homosexual practices.

• Crubeen: Irish dish of boiled pigs feet.

• Cynosure: A person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.

• Druids: A priest, magician, or soothsayer in the ancient Celtic religion.

• Eructation: A belch.

• Fellaheen: Arab peasant or day-laborer.  

• Fustian: Pompous, pretentious speech in writing; thick, durable.

• Grist: Useful material, especially to back up an argument.

• Halcyon: Denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.

• Hyperborean: An inhabitant of the extreme north.

• Inconsequent: Not connected or following logically; irrelevant.

• Junket: An extravagant trip or celebration, in particular one enjoyed by a government official at public expense.

• Lapidary: A person who cuts, polishes, or engraves gems.

• Lollard: A follower of the 14c English reformer John Wycliffe. The Lollards believed that the church should aid people to live a life of evangelical poverty and imitate Jesus Christ. Their ideas influenced the thought of John Huss, who in turn influenced Martin Luther.

• Lumbago: Lower back pain.

• Mabinogion: A collection of Welsh tales of the 11-13c, dealing with Celtic legends and mythology.

• Mazurka: A lively Polish dance in triple time.

• Mincius: The nickname for Antipope (because of his ignorance) Benedict X (died 1073/1080).

• Nescient: Lacking knowledge; ignorant.

• Omphalos: The center or hub of something.

• Ostler: A man employed to look after the horses of people staying at an inn.

• Pederasty: Sexual activity involving a man and a boy or youth.

• Penumbra: The partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object.

• Perambulate: Walk or travel through a place or area, especially for pleasure in a leisurely way.

• Philosophaster: A Latin satirical comedy by Robert Burton written between 1606-1615.

• Prepuce: Technical term for foreskin; the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris.

• Protasis: The clause expressing the condition in a conditional sequence.

• Quaff: Drink heartily, especially an alcoholic drink.

• Sophist: Ancient Greek philosopher/teacher.

• Surfeit: An excess amount.

• Suspired: Breathed.

• Throstle: A machine for continuously spinning wool or cotton.

• Treacle: Flattery.

• Trollop: A woman who has many casual sexual encounters or relationships.

• Tod: Alone (“on ones tod” = “on ones own”).

• Upanishads: Each of a series of Hindu sacred treatises written in Sanskrit c. 800-200 BCE, expounding the Veda’s in predominantly mystical and monistic terms.

• Valise: A small traveling bag or suitcase.

• Vestals: Roman priestess. 

• Wheedle: Employ endearments or flattery to persuade someone to do something or give one something.

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Chronology

• 1922: James Joyce publishes Ulysses.

• 6 May, 1882: The Phoenix Park murders; Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke are stabbed to death in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland. Cavendish was the newly appointed Chief Secretary of Ireland and Burke was the Permanent Under-Secretary, the most senior Irish civil servant. The assassination was carried out by members of a republican organization known as the Irish National Invincibles, a more radical breakaway from the Irish Rep. Brotherhood (Wiki, Ulysses by Joyce).

• Feb, 1534: Silken Thomas (‘Thomas FitzGerald’, ‘10th Earl of Kildare’) is summoned by his Father to London and is appointed deputy governor of Ireland in his absence. A few months later in Jun, 1534, Thomas heard rumors that his father had been executed in the Tower of London and the English government intended the same fate for him and his uncles. Thomas declares himself a rebel against the British in Dublin (Wiki, Ulysses by Joyce).

• 5 Jun, 1798: The Battle of New Ross; rebel forces of the Society of United Irishmen attack a British garrison in the town of New Ross on the River Barrow hoping to break out of Wexford County across the river Barrow to spread the rebellion into Kilkenny County and the outlying province of Muster. The Irish are decisively defeated losing 1000-2800 of their 3000-man force while the British suffer ~230 casualties (Wiki, Ulysses by Joyce).

• 279 BCE: The Battle of Asculum (Pyrrhic War); Greek forces led by King Pyrrhus of Epirus win a “Pyrrhic victory” against a Roman force led by consuls Publius Decius Mus and Publius Sulpicius Saverrio (Wiki, Ulysses by Joyce).

• 445-336 BCE: Life of Antisthenes, Greek philosopher and student of Socrates (Wiki, Ulysses by Joyce).

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