The Multimedia Book

Read more about the book here!

Episode 18, Penelope

Homer's Odyssey:
Penelope was Odysseus's wife, who waited for 20 years for his return, who kept at bay the suitors who had taken residence in her palace forcing her to choose one of them as her husband by telling them to wait till she had finished weaving a shroud for Laertes, her father-in-law (Book II), who for three years wove the shroud during the day and undid it during night only to have her strategy betrayed by one of her maids in the fourth year, remembering whom Odysseus declined the offer of the lovely goddess Calypso to stay with her and become immortal (Book I), who acknowledged Odysseus on his return only after testing him about their marriage bed (Book XIII).

James Joyce's Ulysses:
Joyce used the name Penelope to refer to the final episode/chapter of his Ulysses. There is no real equivalent of this episode in Homer's Odyssey. Jumping abruptly from thought to thought is the norm of this episode that is scores of pages long and is composed of mere 8 sentences. Penelope is the most often publicly read, rather performed, episode of Ulysses. It is the purest form of interior monologue. While Bloom sleeps, Molly is awake, thinks about him, about herself, about various other people and topics. Words such as "yes", "still", "because" signal a change in the direction of her thoughts. But her "because" often explains nothing, her "yes" does not seem to refer to or answer much. Her monologue opens and ends with the word, "yes". 

Selected Highlights of Episode 18 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- . . . she was pious because no man would look at her twice . . . (18.11)
- . . . with all the talk of the world about it people make is only the first time after that its just ordinary do it and think no more about it . . . (18.100)
- . . . he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one . . . (18.141)
- . . . nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know . . . (18.157)
- . . . drawers drawers the whole blessed time . . . (18.305)
- . . . better for him put it into me from behind . . . (18.417)
- . . . a weddingcake standing up miles off her head . . . (18.522)
- . . . curious the way its made 2 the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty . . . (18.539)
- . . . I knew more about men and life when I was 15 than theyll all know at 50 . . . (18.886)
- . . . your blouse is open too low . . . (18.1033)
- . . . usual monthly auction . . . (18.1109)
- . . . I could look at him all day long curly head . . . I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock . . . I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth . . . (18.1349)
- . . . a woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no matter by who . . . (18.1407)
- . . . I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him . . . (18.1578)
- . . . yes I said yes I will Yes. (18.1608) 
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:
- Watercolours by Catherine Meyer
- Reproduction of the sketch of Bloom by James Joyce

3. Links to
- The video clip of Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Joseph Strick's 1967 movie, Ulysses
- The video clip of John Gielgud as the preacher in Joseph Strick's 1979 movie, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- The video of John McDermott singing Thomas Moore's song, The Young May Moon
- The video of Maria Callas singing Ave Maria by Charles Gounod
- The video of Ella Fitzgerald singing H. Cannon's ragtime song, Bill Bailey, won't you please come home
- The novels that Mrs Stanhope gave Molly to read
- The 'dirty letters' that Joyce wrote to Nora

And much more!

Episode 17, Ithaca

Homer's Odyssey:
Ithaca is the island that is the home of Odysseus. The epic Odyssey is the narration of the travails Ulysses faces during his journey home to Ithaca after the end of the Trojan war. 

James Joyce's Ulysses:
Joyce used the name Ithaca to refer to the 17th episode/chapter of his Ulysses that describes the actual homecoming. Here Joyce opens another vista of style in using catechism - a series of (fixed) questions and answers (or percepts used for instruction). Everything that Bloom and Stephen talk about, see, and feel is categorized, everything is treated in an ordered manner. For Joyce this episode represented a mathematics-astronomico-physico-mechanico-geometrico-chemico sublimation of Bloom and Stephen's* interaction. Bloom has brought Stephen home. In the kitchen he makes him a cup of Epss's cocoa which he offers in the moustache cup, a gift by Milly. They talk about various things including the difference in their ages, races, etc. Bloom encourages Stephen to sing. He obliges with a ballad that is anti-semitic in nature. After Stephen gratefully rejects Bloom's offer of a bed for the night and leaves, Bloom goes back into the house, where he notices in the front room the remnants of Boylan's visit that afternoon. Bloom spends a lot of time thinking. About Boylan's visit, about the statue of Narcissus kept on the table, about the books on his bookshelf, about his expenses of the day, about his ambition of a very special mansion and what he will grow in its garden.  After much time and thinking about various things, with his mind and heart in peace, he goes to his bedroom, dresses for the bed, lies down in the direction of N.W. by W. to rest.
It is 2 a.m.
* James Joyce by Richard Ellmann, p. 501, OUP, 1982

Selected Highlights of Episode 17 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- What in water die Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrzer, returning to the range, admire? (17.183)
- the concomitant phenomenon place in the vessel of liquid by the agency of fire? (17.255)
- He had not risked, he died not expect, he had not been disappointed, he was satisfied. (17.349)
- He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not. (17.530)
- . . . the clandestine satisfaction of heroic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled: . . . (17.668)
- The heaven tree of stars hung with humid night blue fruit. (17.1039)
- . . . her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible. (17.1169)
- The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense. (17.1331)
- . . . Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised Friendly Stateaided Building Society . . . (17.1658)
- An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered, sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: . . . (17.1889)
- The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females . . . (17.1949)
- New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat . . . (17.2123)
- . . . the inanity of extolled virtue: . . . (17.2225)
- . . . he plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump,  . . . (17.2241)
- Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailor . . . Xinbad the Phthailer. (17.2322)
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:
- Watercolours by Catherine Meyer
- Original photograph of Fritz Senn in front of the door of 7 Eccles street, Dublin by Chandra Holm
- Reproductions of objects (a moustache cup, and a pot of Plumtree's potted meat) belonging to the Zurich James Joyce Foundation holdings

3. Links to
- The recitation of Shule Aroon by the Oxford High School Concert Choir
- The recitation of Naphtali Herz Imber's poem Hatikvah (now the National Anthem of Israel)
- The rendering of the British folk song, Little Harry Hughes
- Adrian Lester's recitation of the famous soliloquy, To be or not to be, from Hamlet, published by The Guardian Culture

And much more!

Episode 16, Eumaeus

Homer's Odyssey:
When after the end of the Trojan war and after spending 10 years on the sea, Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca, he arrives disguised as an old beggar, at the hut of Eumaeus, his swineherd outside the city. His meeting his loyal servant, being offered bread and bed by him, still grieving at his master's absence, is the story told in Book XIV of Odyssey. 

James Joyce's Ulysses:
Joyce used the name Eumaeus to refer to the 16th episode/chapter of his Ulysses. It is the first episode of the last book of Ulysses and consists of 3 episodes. It is also the first of the three homecoming episodes. The technique Joyce uses here is in a way very non-Joycean compared to the previous episodes. Here he uses lots of cliches, metaphors, a number of idioms and proverbs, writes long-winded sentences, takes us on a literary ride in which he demonstrates how to write something that is pompous in style and rambles quite a bit. 
After having rescued Stephen from the nighttown, Bloom takes him to the cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge to get something to drink. There they get into a conversation with a sailor whose ship had docked just that morning. Though Bloom tries, no real conversation takes place between Stephen and him. Finally Bloom invites Stephen to go with him to his place. Bloom and Stephen walk towards 7 Eccles Street, linked in companionship but apart from each other mentally.
It is 1 a.m.

Selected Highlights of Episode 16 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- . . . some drinkables in the shape of a milk or soda or a mineral. (16.10)
- . . . he relished a glass of choice old wine in season . . . (16.90)
- Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds. (16.247)
- I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. (16.389)
- And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and livers of horses. (16.470)
- I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea . . .  and boats and ships. Salt junk all the time (16.622)
- Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth . . . (16.761)
- He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. (16.822)
-  . . . we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino. (16.886)
- I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. (16.1099)
- . . . Ireland must be important because it belongs to me. (16.1164)
- Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? (16.1385)
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:
- Watercolours by Catherine Meyer
- Reproduction of the photographs of Charles Steward Parnell and Kitty O'Shea

3. Links to
- The recitation of the poem, The Death of Nelson, by S. J. Arnold, published between 1876-79
- The novel, Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens, written in 1864-65
- The song, When You were Sweet Sixteen, written by James Thornton and sung by Perry Como 

And much more!

Episode 15, Circe

Homer's Odyssey:
Odysseus narrates the story of the sea-nymph Circe to King Alcinous in Book X of Odyssey. He narrates how after encountering the Lotus Eaters, and escaping from the Cyclops, he and his men reach the island of Aeaea, where Circe lived. Some of the men sent by Odysseus to find out about the inhabitants of the island, reach Circe's palace, where they see wolves and mountain lions prowling outside. These beasts instead of attacking the newcomers, wag their tails at them. Inviting them inside Circe offers the men food and drink laced with magic drugs, which turn them into pigs. The one person who had not entered Circe's palace returns to the ship and informs Odysseus what had happened. Odysseus sets off himself. On the way he meets Hermes, who tells him about Circe, and gives him a powerful herb that will save him from Circe's magic. Inside Circe's palace, things happen as predicted by Hermes. When Circe realizes that her magic does not touch Odysseus, she invites him to stay with her, and agrees to free his men. Odysseus and his men stay with her for a year, after which they decide to leave and go back to their homes. Circe agrees, tells them that they have to visit Hades, before they can return home.

James Joyce's Ulysses:
Joyce used the name - to refer to the 15th episode/chapter of his Ulysses. This episode is the episode of the Nighttown, which Bloom visits in search of Stephen. Joyce bases this episode on the concept of hallucination. It has a dream like quality in which reality and common sense take back seat. The scenes change rapidly as different persons (dead and alive) appear.  Inanimate objects - the lemon scented soap that Bloom had bought at Sweny's, a cap, a fan, a gramophone, a waterfall, past sins, the morning and noon hours, end of the world - come alive and converse. Dead persons such as Bloom's grandfather, mother and his son Rudy appear. A couple of really crazy hallucinations are the court scene, where his (Bloom's) old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, appears to give medical testimony and announces that Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal and is virgo intacta and Mrs Cohen's brothel which Bloom enters to find Stephen and Lynch and where Bloom is turned into a sow by Bella Cohen, the owner of the brothel. In a way, we do get somewhat used to the craziness we confront in this episode, and learn slowly not to look for rationality. When we succeed in this, we understand what a veritable delight awaits us in this episode. There is lot in this episode which remind us of the Circean episode in Odyssey.
It is midnight.

Selected Highlights of Episode 15 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- A plate crashes, a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. (15.37)
- .Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?  (15.429)
- Kaw kave kankury kake. (15.686)
- I did all a white man could.. . .  Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank. (15.797)
- . . . though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past . . . (15.901)
- I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. (15.1115)
- Habemus carnefice (15.1488)
- . . . with his sceptre strikes down poppies. (15.1565)
-  Several shopkeepers . . . throw objects such as hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, old pieces of fat. (15.1763)
- Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. (15.1798)
- Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh (15.2211)
- I am the dreamer creamery butter (15.2275)
- Pig God! He had two left feet. (15.2572)
- We'll manure you . . . (15.3212)
- I dreamt of a watermelon. (15.3922)
- Non serviam! (15.4228)
- But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king. (15.4436)
- I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! (15.4720)
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:
- Watercolours by Catherine Meyer

3. Links to
- The lyrics of the ballad, Jim Bludso of the Prairie Bell, by John Hay, published in 1971
- The recitation of the song, There is a Flower that Bloometh, by William Wallace, sung by John McCormack
- The poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Lord Alfred Tennyson, published in 1854
- The video of the ballet, Dance of the Hours, by the Arts Ballet Theater of Florida

And much more!

Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun

Homer's Odyssey:
In Book 12 of Odyssey, Odysseus tells king Alcinous, how after he and his sailors escaped from Scylla and Charybdis, they sailed close to the island of the sun god, Helios Hyperion. As both the sage Teiresias and Circe had warned him not to visit that island where sacred cattle of the sun god graze, Odysseus at first forbids his crew to land there. But as they promise him that they will not touch the cattle, Odysseus agrees to land at the island. They stay there for a couple of days. Once in the absence of Odysseus, some of the sailors catch and slaughter a couple of the sacred oxen that are grazing. At the behest of the angry sun god, Zeus agrees to punish Odysseus. When they finally set sail, he sends a powerful lightening bolt which destroys Odysseus's ship and crew.

James Joyce's Ulysses:
It is 10 p.m.
Joyce used the name Oxen of the Sun to refer to the 14th episode/chapter of his Ulysses. Before he had written the episode, Joyce wrote to his friend, Frank Budgen on March 20, 1920 that he intended to compose it in the style that follows the history of English prose, - the language progressing from the style of Latin to that of simpler Anglo-Saxon -, and that he would do it in analogy to the development of an embryo (the 9 parts of the episode being analogous to the 9 months of pregnancy). Starting with the first sentence which is structured like the Latin hymn, Carmen Arvale, the styles of writing imitated are, among others, that of Sallust, Sir John Mandeville, John Milton, Sir Thomas Malory, John Bunyan, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addision, Richard Steele, Lawrence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Charles Lamb, Thomas de Quincey, Thomas Macaulay, Charles Dickens, John Millingon Synge. The episode is set in the maternity hospital on Holles street. In a room of the hospital, a discussion is raging amongst Stephen, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lynch and Lenehan, who are later joined by Mulligan and Bloom. Mrs Purefoy is in labour in the hospital, and gives birth to a baby before the episode ends. A storm rages outside. As it nears midnight, the assembled young men rush out to go to Burke's!

Selected Highlights of Episode 14 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. (14.1)
- Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. (14.60)
- Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning. (14.92)
- And full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. (14.148)
- A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all  . . . (14.253)
- . . . thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, . . . (14.327)
- 'Tis her ninth chick to live . . . (14.515)
- . . . to the poorest kitchen wench no less than the opulent lady of fashion. (14.689)
- One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. (14.785)
- . . . birds of a feather laugh together. (14.904)
- What is the age of the soul of man? (14.1038)
- . . . the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. (14.1079)
-  Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, . . . (14.1090)
- . . . we are born in the same way but we all die in different ways. (14.1241)
- And so time wags on: . . .  (14.1336)
- . . . with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alley Vergängliche) in her glad look. (14.1377)
- Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee? (14.1405)
- Kind Kristyann will yu help young man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee to find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. (14.1539)
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:
- Watercolours and sketches by Catherine Meyer
- Reproductions of photographs of the writers whose styles are imitated in this episode

Links to
- The lyrics of Carmen Fratrum Arvalium
- The animated recitation of the nursery rhyme, This is the House that Jack built
- The recitation of the poem, The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

And much more!

Episode 13, Nausicaa

Homer's Odyssey:
Nausicaa's meeting Odysseus is described in Book VI of Odyssey. She is the daughter of Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians. After taking leave of Calypso, who has freed Odysseus according to the wish of Zeus, Odysseus sets out with his men homewards. They sail for 17 days, when Poseidon realising what is happening sends out a storm which destroys his raft. Odysseus escapes with his life, swims and reaches the shores of the land of the Phaeacians. Meanwhile the goddess Athene appears in Nausicaa's dream, urging her to go with her maids to the river and wash her fine cloths. Nausicaa does as she is bid. After the clothes are washed, the girls play ball. The ball runs off and lands near the bush where Odysseus is resting. He comes out of his hiding, greets Nausicaa, who informs about herself, her father and their country and invites Odysseus to visit the palace. It is there on being entertained by the royal king, Odysseus narrates his adventures.

James Joyce's Ulysses:
Joyce used the name Nausicaa to refer to the 13th episode/chapter of his Ulysses. A far cry from the Joycean style in the preceding episodes, the tone of the style here is one of over -sentimentality. The very first sentence, the summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace, sets the tone of the entire episode. Bloom has come to the Sandymount strand. Three girls - Gerty, Cissy and Edy - are sitting on the rocks, not far away from where Bloom is sitting. In the church nearby, the men's temperance retreat is being conducted. The sound of the Litany of Loreto being chanted in the church, is interspersed with the thoughts and wishful thinking of Gerty regarding the stranger watching her. As night falls, a firework display starts from the distant Mirus bazaar. Description of this firework display in the distance is mixed with the description of Bloom's masturbating while he watches Gerty.
It is 8 p.m.

Selected Highlights of Episode 13 in Ulysses for the Uninitiated:
1. Sayings from Ulysses explored/explained:
- The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace  (13.1)
- . . . in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see.(13.80)
- (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) (13.172)
- . . . and snatched a half kiss (the first!) but only the end of her nose . . . (13.203)
- A delicate pink crept into her pretty cheek . . . (13.360)
- which had a good enough colour if there had been more of it  . . . (13.475)
- Ah? She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl. (13.741)
- Tight boots? No. She's lame! O! (13.771)
- Was that just when he, she? (13.847)
- Buy from us. And buy from us. (13.1124)
- AM. A: (13.1264)
(Episode.Line numbers in brackets above are according to the Critical Edition of Ulysses by H. W. Gabler, 1986)

2. Illustrations:

- Watercolours by Catherine Meyer

3. Links to

- The lyrics of the song, Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee, written. by F. Morrison and published in 1828
- The chanting of The Litany of Loreto

And much more!