History YMMV / Ulysses

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Or at least difficult as hell for the unprepared.

* SpiritualSequel: It carries on from ''Literature/APortraitOfTheArtistAsAYoungMan''.

* TheWoobie: Bloom and Dedalus, though in different ways. With Stephen it's a bit more obvious if you've read 'Portrait of the Artist', where he seems more of a failure. Bloom has it bad too, between having a dead father and son, being a Jew at a highly anti-semitic period in Ireland and generally being an outcast to most of the citizens.

** Special mentions for Proteus, Oxen of the Sun, and Penelope. ''Dear God'', Penelope.

* ValuesResonance: The book was written in the early 1920s, but its frank portrayal of antisemitism and Irish nationalism would seem a lot more timely in the wake of UsefulNotes/{{the Holocaust}} and the Irish Civil War in the ensuing years. Notably, the latter began just a few months after the book was published.

* ValuesDissonance: We never learn ''exactly'' how old Edy Boardman, Cissy Caffrey and Gertie [=MacDowell=] are--but considering Edy has a younger brother who's still a toddler, it's very likely that they're younger than 17. ''Ulysses'' was written when the age of consent in Ireland was still 16, and the story takes place around 30 years after it was raised from ''13''. At the time, readers probably objected more to the voyeurism and [[ADateWithRosiePalms masturbation]] in "Nausicaa" than to the fact that Leopold Bloom was (possibly) masturbating to an underaged girl.
** The narration admits that 'Gerty would never see seventeen again', so she's not underage (Edy and Cissy might be, though).

* EpilepticTrees: There are numerous fan theories about the identity of the mysterious man in the brown macintosh, and some of them are downright ''bizarre''. Some have suggested that he's {{God}}, {{Satan}}, {{the Grim Reaper}}, [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Hermes]], the ghost of Leopold's father, or possibly just [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters one of the many minor characters]] mentioned in various other chapters. Creator/VladimirNabokov speculated that it's Creator/JamesJoyce making a CreatorCameo.

* TheWoobie: Bloom and Dedalus, though in different ways. With Stephen it's a bit more obvious if you've read 'Portrait of the Artist', where he seems more of a failure. Bloom has it bad too, between having a dead father and son, being a Jew at a highly anti-semitic period in Ireland and generally being an outcast to most of the citizens.

* HilariousInHindsight: The unnamed narrator of "Cyclops", who hangs out with uber-patriotic Irish nationalists, likes to claim (perhaps [[SarcasmMode sarcastically]]) that every single important figure in human history (including [[BlatantLies Shakespeare, Dante, and Benjamin Franklin]]) was actually an Irishman. Not unlike a certain [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Russian Starfleet officer]].

* ValuesDissonance: We never learn ''exactly'' how old Edy Boardman, Cissy Caffrey and Gertie [=MacDowell=] are--but considering Edy has a younger brother who's still a toddler, it's very likely that they're younger than 18. ''Ulysses'' was written when the age of consent in Ireland was still 16, and the story takes place around 30 years after it was raised from ''13''. At the time, readers probably objected more to the voyeurism and [[ADateWithRosiePalms masturbation]] in "Nausicaa" than to the fact that Leopold Bloom was (possibly) masturbating to an underaged girl.

* ValuesDissonance: Between Homer's Greece and 1900s Dublin.

* BaseBreaker: One has existed in academia for decades, and it seems it will never be fully resolved: Is the novel misogynistic? Or is it highly feminist in it's own way?

* ValuesDissonance: Between Homer's Greece and 1900s Dublin.

* TrueArtIsOffensive: It was banned in several countries, including the United States, and disgusted many of Joyce's peers.