In the Library episode, Stephen Dedalus puts forth a theory of Hamlet based on 12 lectures, now lost, that Joyce gave in Trieste in 1912. Chief among the implied parallels with Ulysses are Shakespeare and Joyce, King Hamlet and Leopold Bloom, and Prince Hamlet and Stephen.
According to Stephen, Shakespeare has a double presence in Hamlet. The king is the mature Shakespeare; the prince is Shakespeare as a young man.
Stephen’s insistence on Shakespeare’s double presence in Hamlet hints at Joyce’s double presence in Ulysses. Bloom is the mature Joyce; Stephen is Joyce as a young man. Other parallels with Hamlet include Gertrude and Molly Bloom, Claudius and Buck Mulligan, and Claudius and Blazes Boylan.
Like Shakespeare, Dante was a major influence on Joyce. It has been argued that the interrelationship of Joyce, Dedalus, and Bloom is defined in the Incarnation doctrines Stephen lists in “Telemachus”.
Plot summary
Part I: Telemachia Episode 1, “Telemachus”
At 8 a.m., Malachi “Buck” Mulligan, a boisterous medical student, calls aspiring writer Stephen Dedalus up to the roof of the Sandycove Martello tower, where they live. There is tension between Dedalus and Mulligan stemming from a cruel remark Dedalus overheard Mulligan make about his recently deceased mother and from the fact that Mulligan has invited an English student, Haines, to stay with them.
The three men eat breakfast and walk to the shore, where Mulligan demands from Stephen the key to the tower and a loan. The three make plans to meet at a pub, The Ship, at 12:30pm. Departing, Stephen decides that he will not return to the tower that night, as Mulligan, the “usurper”, has taken it over.
Episode 2, “Nestor”
Stephen is teaching a history class on the victories of Pyrrhus of Epirus. After class, one student, Cyril Sargent, stays behind so that Stephen can show him how to do a set of algebraic exercises. Stephen looks at Sargent’s ugly face and tries to imagine Sargent’s mother’s love for him. He then visits unionist school headmaster Garrett Deasy, from whom he collects his pay.
Deasy asks Stephen to take his long-winded letter about foot-and-mouth disease to a newspaper office for printing. The two discuss Irish history and Deasy lectures on what he believes is the role of Jews in the economy. As Stephen leaves, Deasy jokes that Ireland has “never persecuted the Jews” because the country “never let them in”. This episode is the source of some of the novel’s best-known lines, such as Dedalus’s claim that “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” and that God is “a shout in the street”.
Episode 3, “Proteus”
Stephen walks along Sandymount Strand for some time, mulling various philosophical concepts, his family, his life as a student in Paris, and his mother’s death. As he reminisces he lies down among some rocks, watches a couple whose dog urinates behind a rock, scribbles some ideas for poetry and picks his nose.
This chapter is characterised by a stream of consciousness narrative style that changes focus wildly. Stephen’s education is reflected in the many obscure references and foreign phrases employed in this episode, which have earned it a reputation for being one of the book’s most difficult chapters.
Part II: Odyssey, Episode 4, “Calypso”
The narrative shifts abruptly. The time is again 8 a.m., but the action has moved across the city and to the second protagonist of the book, Leopold Bloom, a part-Jewish advertising canvasser. The episode opens with the line “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” After starting to prepare breakfast, Bloom decides to walk to a butcher to buy a mutton kidney.
Returning home, he prepares breakfast and brings it with the mail to his wife Molly as she lounges in bed. One of the letters is from her concert manager Blazes Boylan, with whom she is having an affair. Bloom reads a letter from their daughter Milly Bloom, who tells him about her progress in the photography business in Mullingar. The episode closes with Bloom reading a magazine story titled “Matcham’s Masterstroke”, by Mr. Philip Beaufoy, while defecating in the outhouse.
Episode 5, “Lotus Eaters”
While making his way to Westland Row post office Bloom is tormented by the knowledge that Molly will welcome Boylan into her bed later that day. At the post office he surreptitiously collects a love letter from one ‘Martha Clifford’ addressed to his pseudonym, ‘Henry Flower’.
He meets an acquaintance, and while they chat, Bloom attempts to ogle a woman wearing stockings, but is prevented by a passing tram. Next, he reads the letter from Martha Clifford and tears up the envelope in an alley.
He wanders into a Catholic church during a service and muses on theology. The priest has the letters I.N.R.I. or I.H.S. on his back; Molly had told Bloom that they meant I have sinned or I have suffered, and Iron nails ran in. He buys a bar of lemon soap from a chemist. He then meets another acquaintance, Bantam Lyons, who mistakenly takes him to be offering a racing tip for the horse Throwaway. Finally, Bloom heads towards the baths.
Episode 6, “Hades”
The episode begins with Bloom entering a funeral carriage with three others, including Stephen’s father. They drive to Paddy Dignam’s funeral, making small talk on the way. The carriage passes both Stephen and Blazes Boylan. There is discussion of various forms of death and burial.
Bloom is preoccupied by thoughts of his dead infant son, Rudy, and the suicide of his own father. They enter the chapel for the service and subsequently leave with the coffin cart. Bloom sees a mysterious man wearing a mackintosh during the burial. Bloom continues to reflect upon death, but at the end of the episode rejects morbid thoughts to embrace “warm fullblooded life”.
Episode 7, “Aeolus”
At the office of the Freeman’s Journal, Bloom attempts to place an ad. Although initially encouraged by the editor, he is unsuccessful. Stephen arrives bringing Deasy’s letter about foot-and-mouth disease, but Stephen and Bloom do not meet. Stephen leads the editor and others to a pub, relating an anecdote on the way about “two Dublin vestals”. The episode is broken into short segments by newspaper-style headlines, and is characterised by an abundance of rhetorical figures and devices.
Episode 8, “Lestrygonians”
Bloom’s thoughts are peppered with references to food as lunchtime approaches. He meets an old flame, hears news of Mina Purefoy’s labour, and helps a blind boy cross the street. He enters the restaurant of the Burton Hotel, where he is revolted by the sight of men eating like animals.
He goes instead to Davy Byrne’s pub, where he consumes a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy, and muses upon the early days of his relationship with Molly and how the marriage has declined: “Me. And me now.” Bloom’s thoughts touch on what goddesses and gods eat and drink. He ponders whether the statues of Greek goddesses in the National Museum have anuses as do mortals. On leaving the pub Bloom heads toward the museum, but spots Boylan across the street and, panicking, rushes into the gallery across the street from the museum.
Episode 9, “Scylla and Charybdis”
At the National Library, Stephen explains to some scholars his biographical theory of the works of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, which he argues are based largely on the posited adultery of Shakespeare’s wife. Buck Mulligan arrives and interrupts to read out the telegram that Stephen had sent him indicating that he would not make their planned rendezvous at The Ship. Bloom enters the National Library to look up an old copy of the ad he has been trying to place. He passes in between Stephen and Mulligan as they exit the library at the end of the episode.
Episode 10, “Wandering Rocks”
In this episode, nineteen short vignettes depict the movements of various characters, major and minor, through the streets of Dublin. The episode begins by following Father Conmee, a Jesuit priest, on his trip north, and ends with an account of the cavalcade of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Ward, Earl of Dudley, through the streets, which is encountered by several characters from the novel.
Episode 11, “Sirens”
In this episode, dominated by motifs of music, Bloom has dinner with Stephen’s uncle at the Ormond hotel, while Molly’s lover, Blazes Boylan, proceeds to his rendezvous with her. While dining, Bloom listens to the singing of Stephen’s father and others, watches the seductive barmaids, and composes a reply to Martha Clifford’s letter.
Episode 12, “Cyclops”
This episode is narrated by an unnamed denizen of Dublin who works as a debt collector. The narrator goes to Barney Kiernan’s pub where he meets a character referred to only as “The Citizen”. This character is believed to be a satirisation of Michael Cusack, a founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association.
When Leopold Bloom enters the pub, he is berated by the Citizen, who is a fierce Fenian and anti-Semite. The episode ends with Bloom reminding the Citizen that his Savior was a Jew. As Bloom leaves the pub, the Citizen throws a biscuit tin at Bloom’s head, but misses. The episode is marked by extended tangents made in voices other than that of the unnamed narrator; these include streams of legal jargon, a report of a boxing match, Biblical passages, and elements of Irish mythology.
Episode 13, “Nausicaa”
All the action of the episode takes place on the rocks of Sandymount Strand, the shoreline that Stephen visited in Episode 3. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, is seated on the rocks with her two friends, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The girls are taking care of three children, a baby, and four-year-old twins named Tommy and Jacky. Gerty contemplates love, marriage and femininity as night
