Ulysse

The action of Ulysse takes place in one day, in Dublin, in 1904. Ulysse's character is a young Jewish employee, Leopold Bloom; Stephen Dedalus, a young Irish poet, is Télémaque; Marion, Bloom's wife and the one who plays the trumpet, is Pénélope. Nothing extraordinary happens in the course of this day. Bloom and Dedalus leave the city, going about their business, and find themselves in a bordel in the evening. Each episode corresponds to an episode of L'Odyssée, but the parody is based on a mise en cause du monde moderne à une époque de muflisme. Joyce exprime l'universel par le particulier. Bloom, Dedalus and Marion are archetypes. Toute la vie, la naissance et la mort, la recherche du père (Dedalus is also Hamlet), celle du fils (Bloom a perdu un fils jeune), toute l'histoire sont contenues en un seul jour. It is to Rabelais and Swift that one can compare the art of Joyce, who wrote, in Ulysse, the great epic and satirical work of our time.