Time and Identity in Ulysses and the Odyssey - The Florida James Joyce Series (Hardback)

A comparative study of two classic

literary works, from a specialist in Joyce and Homer

Time and Identity in

“Ulysses” and the “Odyssey” offers a unique in-depth comparative study of

two classic literary works, examining

essential themes such as change, the self, and humans’ dependence on and

isolation from others. Stephanie Nelson shows that in these texts, both Joyce

and Homer address identity by looking at the paradox of time—that people are

constantly changing yet remain the same across the years.

In Nelson’s analysis, both Ulysses

and the Odyssey explore dichotomies

such as the permanence of names and shifting of stories, independence and

connection, and linear and cyclical narrative. Nelson discusses Homer’s

contrast of ordinary to mythic time alongside Joyce’s contrast of “clocktime”

to experienced time. She analyzes the characters Odysseus and Leopold Bloom,

alienated from their previous selves; Telemachus and Stephen Dedalus, trapped

by the past; and Penelope and Molly Bloom, able to recast time through weaving,

storytelling, and memory. These concepts are also explored through Joyce’s

radically different narrative styles and Homer’s timeless world of the gods.

Nelson’s thorough

knowledge of ancient Greece, Joyce, narratology, oral tradition, and

translation results in a volume that speaks across literary specializations. This

book makes the case that Ulysses and

the Odyssey should be read together

and that each work highlights and clarifies aspects of the other. As Joyce’s characters

are portrayed as both flux and fixity, readers will see Homer’s hero fight his

way out of myth and back into the constant changes of human existence.