Cross-episode comparison
Homeric Parallels Index
A single map of the Homeric scaffolding beneath Ulysses. Jump between transformations, themes and close readings across the episodes — and click any row to land at the matching section of the full essay.
- Ep ITelemachusOdyssey, Books 1–2Telemachus, dispossessed princeStephen Dedalus, dispossessed artist
Both are sons displaced in their own house by louder, hungrier men.
Read in context → - Ep ITelemachusOdyssey, Books 1–2The suitors devouring Odysseus' hallMulligan & Haines occupying the Martello tower
The intruder eats your bread and mocks your grief.
Read in context → - Ep ITelemachusOdyssey, Books 1–2Athena urging Telemachus to actThe milkwoman / Stephen's conscience
A small, unrecognised visitor sparks the journey.
Read in context → - Ep ITelemachusOdyssey, Books 1–2The absent father OdysseusSimon Dedalus (failed) / Bloom (unrecognised)
Joyce splits the Homeric father into a real failure and a future surrogate.
Read in context → - Ep IINestorOdyssey, Book 3Nestor, the wise old counsellorMr Deasy, the pedantic schoolmaster
Wisdom hardens into prejudice; counsel curdles into lecture.
Read in context → - Ep IINestorOdyssey, Book 3Hospitality at Pylos (xenia)Deasy's transactional wage-paying
Sacred hosting becomes accounting.
Read in context → - Ep IINestorOdyssey, Book 3Stories of fathers told to TelemachusHistory 'a nightmare from which I am trying to awake'
Inherited narrative shifts from comfort to burden.
Read in context → - Ep IINestorOdyssey, Book 3Pisistratus, Nestor's attentive sonSargent, the failing schoolboy
The biddable heir becomes the pitiable pupil.
Read in context → - Ep IIIProteusOdyssey, Book 4 (Menelaus' tale)Menelaus wrestling Proteus on PharosStephen wrestling perception on Sandymount Strand
The shape-shifter becomes the visible world itself.
Read in context → - Ep IIIProteusOdyssey, Book 4 (Menelaus' tale)Eidothea's whispered instructionStephen's own interior philology
The helper-goddess is internalised as language.
Read in context → - Ep IIIProteusOdyssey, Book 4 (Menelaus' tale)Proteus' four transformationsThe 'ineluctable modality of the visible'
Myth becomes phenomenology — the world as flux you must hold.
Read in context → - Ep IIIProteusOdyssey, Book 4 (Menelaus' tale)Truth wrenched from a godMeaning wrenched from signs on a beach
Both heroes refuse to let go until the world yields a word.
Read in context →
Episodes IV–XVIII will join this index as their parallel pages are published.