Talk:Ulysses (novel)

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 * James Joyce reads from Ulysses.ogg

On this (Blooms)day
There's still a week left to address the issues at Wikipedia_talk:Selected_anniversaries/June_16 and rescue Bloomsday for the main page. Sparafucil (talk) 22:09, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

article doubled in size since January with added interpretive material
On 25 January the body of this article was 5,982 words. On 20 June the body is 14,190 words.

Most of what has more than doubled the size of the article is the section I broke out from Plot summary into its own Interpretations section. It appears to be primarily devoted to presenting the reading of a scholar named Frederick K. Lang. (Although I can't find a CV or background on him, the press appears legit.)

Nevertheless, there are WP:UNDUE issues—in addition to the tremendous length.

Tagging @User:Quarkny, would you mind sharing a little bit about your project here? The amount of time and work you've put in is incredible — and I very much appreciate the attention to sourcing – but if this material can't be better integrated, seriously condensed, or broken off into another article, it will almost certainly be axed by future editors, which would obviously be a shame.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 16:37, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

themes section
I read the Interpretations section with a little more care this morning, and I am not seeing where it might belong on Wikipedia. A better venue might be Medium with a title along the lines of "A Reading of Catholic Themes in James Joyce's Ulysses". Perhaps, though, someone else will have a better idea.

In any case, thinking about what might be appropriately preserved for this article — which is also independently a general suggestion for improvement — I wonder if it might not benefit from a Themes section. This could include 1-3 paragraphs each on such major themes of Ulysses as Catholicism, national identity, the body, gender and sexuality, love, paternity, the vocation of the artist, the anxiety of influence—or whatever editors might want to contribute (until such a time as it, in turn, becomes too long and needs to be cut back or broken off into a child article). For it is in no small part because the novel addresses so many major dimensions of human life that Ulysses has attained the stature it enjoys today.

(For similar reasons, the article would benefit from a Literary Techniques section, upon which there is also a massive secondary literature. But I didn't come to this article with the intention of doing any serious work on it, and so I will leave off further suggestions.)

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 14:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Also, for anyone not aware, the Manual of Style does have a section specifically devoted to works of fiction: MOS:NOVELS.
 * I would add that, in the case of Ulysses, a "Literary Influences" section would also be justified. An edit to the Homer material might allow some of the Hamlet material from "Interpretations" to be included here under its own subhead. Gifford's Annotations could also be cited in the section lead on the particular significance of the King James Bible, Blake, and Dante (2nd ed., pp. xvii–xviii). Perhaps some future editor would be inspired to elaborate.
 * I'll also note that this style guideline supports my suggestion of a "Themes" section, stating, In many ways this is the most important section of the page because it details the "meat" of the novel. We would only need two or three themes to justify the creation of the section, which could be built out over time by future editors.
 * (Attn: @Quarkny.)
 * Cheers, Patrick (talk) 17:58, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I've started work on the Shakespeare section. I'll try to condense it by eliminating what's extraneous while at the same time demonstrating the importance of Hamlet to Ulysses. After The Odyssey, it's the literary work most relevant to Ulysses. The important parallels are between Shakespeare and Joyce, King Hamlet and Leopold Bloom, Prince Hamlet and Stephen Dedalus. But this is complicated by Shakespeare's relation to the prince and Joyce's relation to Stephen. I may have to put Aquinas aside for now, but the religious parallels (Father-Son) do help make sense of it all. Wish me luck Quarkny (talk) 20:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Good luck! In addition to MOS:NOVELS, by the way, you might want to read WP:WIKIVOICE and, if you have not already, the rest of WP:NPOV. For instance, you cannot, in general, claim to know what Joyce was thinking or how he related to his individual characters (or, cases where this is warranted, it's best to include in-text attribution to the author of the source).
 * A more succinct account of the importance of Hamlet, however, will be most welcome!
 * Cheers, Patrick (talk) 01:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Patrick,
 * What I have so far. As you see, I haven't integrated the citations from the original yet. I'll use the same sources, plus two additional.
 * Joyce and Shakespeare
 * After Homer's Odyssey, the literary work Ulysses parallels most closely is Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play is mentioned in "Telemachus." 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. Among the implied parallels with Ulysses are Shakespeare and Joyce, King Hamlet and Leopold Bloom, Prince Hamlet and Stephen Dedalus. The latter wears a “Hamlet hat” and his interior monologue parallels Hamlet soliloquies.
 * Shakespeare is represented in both the king and the prince, Joyce in both Bloom and Stephen. The king is the mature Shakespeare; the prince is Shakespeare as a young man. Bloom is the mature Joyce; Stephen is Joyce as a young man. Other parallels are Polonius and Mr Deasy, Claudius and Buck Mulligan, Claudius and Blazes Boylan—all three are “usurpers”—Hamnet Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s only son who died at age 11, and Rudy Bloom, Bloom’s only son who died after 11 days.
 * Ulysses also parallels events in Hamlet, though not exactly. The closet scene in Hamlet, where the prince confronts his mother and his father’s ghost appears, is paralleled by Stephen’s confrontation with the mother’s ghost in “Circe.”
 * How can I show this to others on Wiki?
 * Best, Happy 4th.
 * Frederick Quarkny (talk) 23:02, 4 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Frederick,
 * The best ways to share a short draft is on the talk page, as you do here. For a longer draft, you can provide links to a page or section in you userspace. (What you write there will not appear in search results, but anyone can view it if they know where to look, i.e., if you provide a link or they look at your edit history.)
 * Since this has been here for a few days now without objection, I would go ahead and add it to the article. If anyone objects at a later date, you can discuss then. I often wikilink back to talk discussions (if they exist) in the edit description when I implement a change that has been discussed in talk. This is in no way required, however; I just think it encourages editors to discuss before reverting or making non-trivial changes.
 * Oh, and in case you don't already plan to, I would include citations directly to Ulysses for "Hamlet hat" and "usurpers" in addition to the secondary source(s) supporting the larger claim.
 * Cheers, Patrick (talk) 17:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC)