217
consciousness” was coined by
the philosopher and psychologist
William James (brother of Henry) in
The Principles of Psychology (1890).
The term was first applied in a
literary context to an early stream-
of-consciousness novel in English,
Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed Roofs
(1915), which used the technique to
explore the idea of a feminine prose.
With Ulysses—the most famous
and influential example of stream-of-
consciousness writing—Joyce made
the sustained literary leap out of
traditional narrative techniques
into conveying the mind of the
character directly, unmediated
by the author. Virginia Woolf, too,
began experimenting with stream
of consciousness soon after, notably
in Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
To register the complexity and
subtlety of the interior mental
process, from conscious to almostunconscious thought, these writers
followed loose, often metaphorical,
associations of words and phrases,
as well as inserting ungrammatical
constructions and omitting definite
or indefinite articles.
Joyce abandoned complete
coherence for the realism of the
interior monologue, although the
flow of thoughts may indirectly
evoke action. “Postal order stamp.
Postoffice lower down. Walk now”
suggests that Leopold Bloom,
walking through the city in Ulysses,
is reminding himself of what he
needs to buy and where to buy it.A June day in Dublin
The entire action of Ulysses takes
place in and around Dublin on
June 16, 1904 (now celebrated
as “Bloomsday”), as three main
characters cross paths: Stephen
Dedalus, a teacher and would-be
writer, 22 years old; Leopold Bloom
(usually just referred to as Bloom in
the text), an advertising canvasser,
half Hungarian-Jewish and half
Irish, 38 years old; and his wifeMolly, a singer, 34, whom Leopold
rightly suspects of having an affair
with a man-about-town known as
“Blazes” Boylan. The novel teems
with other characters, too, and a
kaleidoscopic portrait of Dublin
emerges out of the inner lives
of Stephen, Bloom, and Molly, in
a quarter of a million words of
microscopically detailed invention.
The principal settings are a
habitable defensive tower, a school,
a beach, a house, a butcher’s shop, a
graveyard, a newspaper office, a
library, a funeral parlor, a concert
room, a tavern, a hospital, a brothel,
and a cabman’s shelter, as well
as Dublin’s city streets.
Laying bare the multiplicity of
thoughts, emotions and actions
(including bodily functions) that
take Stephen, Bloom, and Molly
through their day and night, Ulysses
makes the private public on a scale
never before undertaken in fiction.
The opening chapters form a
bridge with Joyce’s earlier, auto-
biographical novel, Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, which is ❯❯See also: Odyssey 54 ■ The Waste Land 213 ■ In Search of Lost Time 240–41 ■ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 241 ■
Mrs. Dalloway 242 ■ The Sound and the Fury 242–43 ■ The Book of Disquiet 244BREAKING WITH TRADITION
Ulysses takes place on a single day,
June 16, 1904, in Dublin, in the course
of which its three protagonists cross
paths with each other and a variety of
other characters the city.Every life is many days, day
after day. We walk through
ourselves, meeting robbers,
ghosts, giants, old men,
young men, wives, widows,
brothers-in-love.
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