Ulysses and Modernism

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how "Ulysses" can be seen as a highly significant work of modernism. The paper explains the changing role of technology in the modern age and shows how in "Ulysses" Joyce reconnects the ideas of modernism with Irish tradition. The paper demonstrates in detail how this new form was adequate to the task of embodying Ireland's oral tradition.

From the Paper:

"Declan Kiberd writes of Ulysses that 'Joyce set his book in the 'centre of paralysis' that was Dublin in 1904, in the conviction that if he could get to the dead heart of that city, he could render the discontents and estrangements of the modern world'. In this comment Kiberd, in fact, sheds as much light on the condition of modernity as he does on Joyce's goals in writing Ulysses. One can read, for example, his use of the word 'discontents' as indicative not only of the condition of a society of discontented citizens, but also as, quite crucially, the condition of a society which has, at its core, the inverse of 'content', in other words, absence. This would, of course, carry a number of repercussions for the age as a whole. Georg Simmel's observation in 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' that 'London has never acted as England's heart, but often as her intellect and [...] moneybag', indicates that in the modern era, it was perceived that a considerable dichotomy had grown between the intellectual and corporeal facets, and that a point had been reached at which the intellectual values of capitalism had actually subsumed corporeal, or human, values."

Sample of Sources Used:

• 'Age of Aquarius' on Astrology.com website, www.astrology.com/ageof aquarius.html
• Benjamin, Walter, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in Illuminations, ed. and trans. by Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1992) pp. 211-244
• Derrida, Jacques, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992)
• Eagleton, Terry, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso, 1995), p. 297
• Eliot, T. S., 'Ulysses, Order and Myth' in Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot (London: Faber, 1984) pp. 177-78

More papers on Ulysses and Modernism:

• Book Review # 95965 : "James Joyce's "Ulysses"
• Analytical Essay # 63573 : "Ulysses": A Poetic Journey"
• Comparison Essay # 46541 : "Homer's "The Odyssey" and Coen's Film, "O Brother Where Art Thou?"

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