ULYSSES

Ulysses is about what happens to the three main character (Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and Molly, his wife) and what goes on their mind; all this spans a single day in Dublin in June 1904.

The main theme is a quest for identity, the need for fulfilment, in fact there is a double quest: the son searching for a father and a father searching for a son.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH HOMER'S ODYSSEY AND CHARACTERS

Each episode in the novel is made to correspond with an episode in the Homer's Odyssey, so it's divided into three parts and 18 episodes. The first part, Telemachia, consist of three episodes devoted to Stephen Dedalus, the son. He represent Telemachus.

The main bulk, Odyssey, consist of twelve episodes devoted to Bloom, the father, who is Odysseus.

The last three chapter, Nostos, are devoted to the return home. The final episode is entirely centred on Molly, Bloom's wife, so she stands for Penelope, but also for Magna Mater, Gea Tellus, the female principle and the vital force that makes life worth living in spite of failures.

The epic structure of the novel can be interpreted as a criticism of twenty century life, which Joyce considered unheroic and meaningless. Modern man is devoid of ideals and notions of valour.

It has been commented that we know Bloom better than any other character of modern fiction. He represents the modern man in modern society; his figure gives a representation of the modern hero, that is an antihero. He is a typical member of the lower  middle class man, vulgar and even disgusting and pathetic. He know that Molly, his wife, betrays him. She is unintelligent and uninhibited; she is getting worse and worse after the death of their son. The other protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is a young intellectual looking for an house to live in and a new family. It's only near the end of the novel that the two men meet, while they are in a clinic.

INNOVATIONS AND INTRODUCTIONS

The interior monologue technique and the stream of consciousness are used to present indirectly all the story.

An example of stream of consciousness is that of Bloom on Sandymount beach; he reflects on his past life and   on the day he has just spent.

He has another stream of consciousness at the funeral; there he can't think about it because of his rejection of the unwelcome concept of death.

Epiphanies were short compositions that caught sudden insights, "flashes" into apparently unimportant experiences. The word "epiphany" has a religious root, in fact it was adopted by Christian liturgy to describe the revelation of Christ to the Magi. Joyce gave the term the same connotations and used it as a literary device. It can be descried as a sudden spiritual revelation originated in a very ordinary situations emerging from trivial events.

An example of epiphany is that of Bloom who, hungry, finds a place to eat. In this occasion that's a flow of consciousness too. 

Beside the above quoted innovations Joyce introduced a bewildering variety of language forms suiting the different situations. Another typical aspect of Ulysses is represented by irony and by broad and sometimes grotesque sense of humour, that flows throughout the novel in the form of popular Irish jokes and surrealistic puns.