History Literature / Ulysses

* GenreRoulette: the ''Circe'' chapter is written as a play, ''Ithaca'' like a catechism, ''Aeolus'' like a newspaper column, and the final chapter is a punctuation free list of the thoughts going through Molly's mind as she has tries to fall asleep next to her husband. There are too many examples to list here.
* GrossOutShow: the book doesn't need pictures to gross out its readers. Frequently.

Joyce’s ''Ulysses'' arguably did for modernist fiction what Creator/TSEliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” did for modernist poetry. Notably, the novel and the poem have quite a few thematic and stylistic parallels, with both featuring a pointedly unromantic protagonist, a lovingly rendered portrait of the modern city, a strong focus on the ongoing process of thought and imagination, and a freewheeling structure that can throw some readers for a loop. Uncertainty and self-doubt are also major themes in both works, and the protagonists of both works even mentally compare themselves to [[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} Prince Hamlet]].

!! ''Ulysses'' uses the following tropes:

* AwfulWeddedLife: Martin Cunningham is said to have this. Averted with Bloom and Molly. [[spoiler: Although she's carrying on with Boylan, in her final monologue she decides that Bloom is the better man and that she's going to stick with him.]]

--> "—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!"

-->'''Citizen''': By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will.

--> —We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.\\

-->'''Citizen''': And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters.

--->'''Narrator''': A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job.

* {{Mind Screw}}: The ''Circe'' chapter where Bloom roams the red light district, hallucinating.

* {{Oireland}}: Every cliche is averted, except for the ones Joyce [[TruthInTelevision confirms]].

* ParentalSubstitute [=/=] ReplacementGoldfish: Stephen Dedalus becomes this [[spoiler:for Bloom, especially after he rescues him from some thugs]].

* TheReveal: In Nausicaa, when we find out [[spoiler: Gerty is lame in one leg]], to poignant effect (although it's also pretty funny, as Bloom has been leching on her for several pages and he now feels more than usually guilty about it.)

-->'''Private Carr''': I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.

* TheSnarkKnight: Stephen lives this trope with a vengeance; he's so snarky that he can't even be bothered to snark ''out loud'', preferring to do it in his InnerMonologue. As the book continues and his alcohol intake increases, he loosens up and starts [[DidIJustSayThatOutLoud speaking his mind]], climaxing when his snarkery [[spoiler: offends a [[CantHoldHisLiquor drunk]] British soldier so much that the soldier [[PoliceBrutality knocks him down]], thus attracting the attention of the local police - but then Bloom, who Stephen hardly knows, steps in and defuses the situation.]]

-->'''Bloom''': [''angrily''] You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take his regimental number.

Creator/JamesJoyce’s book, his second novel, was first published in serialized form from 1918 to 1920, then collected in book form and republished in 1922. The actual ''story'' can be jotted on the back of a matchbox. Taking place on a single day—June 16th, 1904—in [[TheCity Dublin]], ''Ulysses'' follows the daily routine of three people: young and jaded would-be artist Stephen Dedalus, passive outsider Leopold Bloom, and his sensual, unfaithful wife Molly. As Stephen and Leopold wander the streets of Dublin, Molly lies in bed all day and cheats on her husband. Eventually, Leopold saves Stephen from a beating at the hands of British soldiers and invites him home to recuperate. Stephen visits his home, but declines to stay the night and Leopold joins Molly in bed.

->''“It is the book to which all of us are indebted and none of us can escape.”''
-->--'''Creator/TSEliot'''

%% * ADateWithRosiePalms: On a public beach, no less.

* CovertPervert: Leopold does not come across as a pervert, but see the headings under ADateWithRosiePalms and ThePeepingTom. Leopold is also a transvestite in the sense that UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud used the word.

As of this writing, the novel has been adapted to film twice, [[PragmaticAdaptation with varying degrees of faithfulness]]. American filmmaker Joseph Strick directed the first adaptation in 1967, which won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Irish filmmaker Sean Walsh also directed a loose adaptation called ''[[Film/Bloom2003 Bloom]]'' in 2003, just in time for the centennial of Bloomsday; boasting an all-Irish cast, the film featured Stephen Rea (of ''Film/TheCryingGame'' and ''Film/VForVendetta'' fame) as Leopold Bloom, and Hugh O'Connor (best known as young Christy Brown in ''Film/MyLeftFoot'') as Stephen Dedalus. Tropers of [[TheEighties the '80s]] also might remember the BBC documentary series ''Ten Great Writers of the Modern World'', which dramatized several key scenes from the novel for its episode on Creator/JamesJoyce.[[note]] Memorably, the episode featured Creator/PatriciaQuinn (Magenta from ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'') in a cameo as Bella Cohen the brothel madam.[[/note]] There was also a successful stage play called ''Ulysses in Nighttown'' based on the famously [[{{Surrealism}} surreal]] fifteenth episode "Circe", which is actually written as a play in the book (complete with stage directions).

* The first side of the [[Creator/TheFiresignTheatre Firesign Theatre]] album ''How Can You Be In Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All'' ends with the character Ralph Spoilsport abruptly shifting into a rather peculiar {{Gender Flip}}ped rendition of the end of "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy".

* The first side of the [[Creator/TheFiresignTheatre Firesign Theatre]] album "How Can You Be In Two Places …" ends with the character Ralph Spoilsport abruptly shifting into a rather peculiar gender-flipping rendition of the end of "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy".

-->'''Julia:''' The only part of ''Literature/{{Ulysses}}'' worth reading is the last chapter, and everybody knows it!

--->The head coach wants no sissies\\
So he reads to us from something called "Ulysses"

WARNING: This book can drive you mad, and its [[SelfDemonstrating/FinnegansWake follow up]] ''will''.