ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Ulysses, a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce, is a key text of literary modernism. Divided into 18 chapters, it follows the structure of Homer’s Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem about Odysseus’s journey home from the Trojan War to his wife Penelope in Ithaca.

Detailed explanation-2: -Bloom is curious, decent, pacific, and somewhat timid. Though he never leaves the streets of Dublin, Bloom is a wanderer like the Greek mythological hero Ulysses (Odysseus), to whom he is compared throughout the book. In Stephen Dedalus, who represents both Telemachus and Joyce himself, Bloom finds a surrogate son.

Detailed explanation-3: -James Joyce probably based Leopold Bloom on Aron Ettore Schmitz, better known as Italo Svevo, the pioneering modernist who was born in Trieste to a German Jewish father and an Italian mother. The two met when Svevo was posted to London for work and needed to improve his English.

Detailed explanation-4: -The reality is complex: both Joyce and Eliot did seek myths that could make sense of contemporary history, but they both also recognized that, to be compelling, these modern myths must be complex, ironic, and multifarious. The seeds of postmodernism are present in the highest of high modernist works.