Complete today 100 years one of the great masterpieces of world literature: Ulysses, di James Joyce, a revolutionary novel that marked a watershed in twentieth-century fiction. In reality, the first publication was in installments, in the magazine "Little Review" of New York, and went on from 1918 to 1920, when the periodical was seized precisely because of the content of some episodes of Ulysses, judged immoral. The complete work saw the light in Paris just a century ago, the 2 February 1922. The volume was printed by the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop, one of the main cultural centers of the French capital in the 1960s, frequented by novelists such as Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald. In Italy, Ulisse was published for the first time in XNUMX by Mondadori in the Medusa series, edited by Elio Vittorini.
What is Joyce's Ulysses about?
The novel, divided into 18 chapters-episodes, is set in Dublin and takes place over a single day (June 16, 1904, the date on which Joyce met Nora Barnacle, who later became his wife). From dawn to night, the reader follows the life of Leopold Bloom, advertising agent of Jewish origin, middle-aged man of average culture. His wife is a sensual and unfaithful woman, Molly, an opera singer now in decline. The fate of these two characters intersects with that of Stephen Dedalus, an idealistic and rebellious young intellectual. Alongside the protagonists, several secondary figures also appear, to whom Joyce often hints in a fleeting way.
The comparison between myth and reality
One of the fundamental themes of the work and the comparison between myth and realityalready evident in the title. Leopold relives the deeds and adventures of the Homeric hero in a modern key, to the point that links and parallels with the Odyssey are found both in the structure and in the content of Ulysses, but always reviewed through a distorting and parodic lens. Many issues are then connected to the ferment aroused in those years by the psychoanalysis: The father-son relationship, sensuality, death, the problem of time.
The stream of consciousness
Formally, Joyce's masterpiece is a kaleidoscope of creativity and innovation. Each chapter is written in a different style. In addition to the massive presence of puns, neologisms and interior monologues, what characterizes Ulysses is above all the technique of stream of consciousness, which reports on the page the thoughts of the characters as they flow from the mind, without comments, without structural connections, even without punctuation (a feature that makes reading the novel rather complex).
Joyce's Revolution
With its extreme experimentalism, Joyce disrupts the structure of the traditional novel and underlines the ineffable and fluid character of human experience. For all these reasons, Ulysses marked a decisive stage in the history of the contemporary novel, enriching it with many new dimensions.
