Why is Episode 11 of Ulysses called Sirens?

Joyce maps Episode 11 onto Book 12 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus sails past the Sirens — singing women whose voices lure sailors to their deaths. Joyce calls his chapter 'Sirens' because the bronze and gold barmaids of the Ormond Hotel bar, the singing of patriotic ballads at the piano, and the seductive music of language itself all combine to threaten Bloom with the most modern of shipwrecks: distraction, sentimentality, and the knowledge that, at this very moment across town, his wife is meeting her lover.

What happens in Episode 11 of Ulysses?

It is around 4 p.m. on 16 June 1904. Leopold Bloom enters the Ormond Hotel bar and dining room. Two barmaids — Miss Douce (bronze) and Miss Kennedy (gold) — flirt with the regulars. Simon Dedalus, Ben Dollard and Father Cowley sing 'M'appari' from Martha and 'The Croppy Boy' at the piano. Boylan briefly stops by on his way to Molly. Bloom eats liver and bacon, writes a covert letter to his pen-pal Martha Clifford, listens to the music, thinks of Molly, and leaves with the chapter's famous closing fart.

Who are the Sirens in Joyce's chapter?

Most immediately, the two barmaids: Miss Douce with her 'bronze' hair and Miss Kennedy with her 'gold'. But Joyce extends the figure: the singing itself, the sentimental Irish ballads, the murmuring beer-taps, the language of the chapter's musical prose — each is a Siren-voice. Even Bloom's own appetite for self-pity becomes a Siren he must sail past.

Why is the chapter written like music?

The chapter's art in Joyce's schema is Music, its technique fuga per canonem — a fugue by the book. The eight-page overture at the start is a deliberate scramble of motifs that will resurface as full phrases; the prose imitates trills, runs, pedal-points, even percussive snaps. Joyce is testing whether English can perform what music does — a Siren-test of language itself.

Why is the chapter important?

Sirens is the precise hour of Molly's adultery, and Joyce surrounds Bloom with every form of sentimental seduction — song, drink, female attention, nostalgia — while he sits, hears it all, and is not destroyed. Like Odysseus lashed to the mast, Bloom listens without consenting. The chapter is the novel's most ambitious experiment in fusing form and feeling.

Ormond Hotel · Bar & Restaurant · 4 p.m.

Programme — Music for the Afternoon

M'appari · The Croppy Boy · Love's Old Sweet Song

Ep. XI · 16 vi 1904

Episode XI · Sirens · Music & the Hour of Adultery

Sirens: Bloom Lashed to the Mast.

Episode 11 of Ulysses moves Homer's singing temptresses into the bronze-and-gold bar of the Ormond Hotel — and surrounds Bloom with every modern Siren (song, drink, sentiment, a jingling jaunting-car bound for Eccles Street) at the precise hour his wife meets her lover.

"Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing."
Ulysses, Episode 11 (opening)

Leopold Bloom

Hearing, not drowning

Douce & Kennedy

Bronze and gold barmaids

Odysseus

Bound to the mast

The Sirens

Singing on the isle

Plain-English mode

Scroll to begin

§1 · Why "Sirens"?

A hotel bar, two barmaids, a fugue.

In Book 12 of the Odyssey, Circe warns Odysseus of an island where singing women lure sailors onto rocks. He plugs his crew's ears with wax, has himself bound to the mast, and sails past hearing every note without consenting to die for it.

Joyce relocates the strait to the bar of the Ormond Hotel on the north Dublin quays. The Sirens are Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy; the song is opera, ballad and barmaid-flirtation; the appointed hour is 4 p.m. — and at exactly that hour, in a bed across the city, Molly Bloom is unfaithful. Bloom sits, hears it all, and binds himself to a quiet act of letter-writing.

The Homeric mast becomes a side-table in a dining room.

c. 8th c. BCE
Homer's Odyssey
Odysseus is lashed to the mast past the Sirens
1847
Flotow's Martha
The opera whose tenor aria becomes the chapter's Siren-song
1798
The Croppy Boy
The ballad sung by Ben Dollard — the chapter's second song
16 June 1904, ~4 p.m.
Ormond Hotel, Ormond Quay
Bloom hears, writes, endures; Boylan jingles past
1922
Publication
Ulysses appears in Paris

§2 · Odyssey Primer

The Sirens in The Odyssey — in brief.

Circe tells Odysseus that as he leaves her island he will come first to the Sirens, whose singing bewitches all men who hear it. The shore around them is white with the bleached bones of sailors who steered toward the voice.

The instructions are precise: stop your crew's ears with softened beeswax. If you wish to hear the song yourself, have the men bind you upright to the mast and, no matter how you beg, refuse to untie you until the island is well behind you.

Odysseus obeys. He hears the song — and survives only because of the discipline of the rope. Joyce takes this minute of bound, attentive hearing as the template for his whole musical chapter.

♪

Song

✦

Bronze

❦

Gold

≈

Mast

✺

Tap

§3 · How Homer becomes Dublin

Six transformations, from the island to the Ormond.

Homer

Two singing Sirens on their island

Joyce

Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy at the Ormond bar

In the Odyssey the Sirens are two (later traditions multiplied them) — voices alone, with no flesh worth describing. Joyce's two barmaids are all flesh: a colour, a laugh, a snapping garter, a heave of a sigh. The disembodied voice that wrecks ships has been re-incarnated as Edwardian Dublin charm — and is, by design, much harder to resist.

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.
Ulysses, Episode 11 (opening)

barmaidscolouroverture

§4 · Who's Who

Homeric counterparts in Episode 11.

Sirens stages the Ormond Hotel as Homer's singing island — a single room full of voices, each promising to undo the listener in a different way.

Ulysses	Odyssey counterpart	Note
Leopold Bloom	Odysseus at the mast	Hears all the songs of Dublin without being undone
Miss Lydia Douce	Siren (bronze)	Snaps her garter, embodies the chapter's flesh-music
Miss Mina Kennedy	Siren (gold)	Quieter, gold-haired, fixes the listener with a stare
Simon Dedalus	The chief singer	His tenor voice in M'appari is the chapter's high temptation
Ben Dollard	The bass singer	Bellows The Croppy Boy — patriotic Siren-music
Blazes Boylan	A doomed sailor (un-bound)	Jingles past the bar bound for Molly — sails straight at the rocks
Pat the bald waiter	The deafened crewman	Cannot hear properly; serves the food while the song goes on

Linati Schema (1920)

Scene: The Concert Room. Art: Music. Symbol: Barmaids. Technique: fuga per canonem.

Gilbert Schema (1921)

Organ: ear. Colour: none. Hour: 4 p.m.

Homeric correspondences

Sirens → Douce & Kennedy / the songs themselves. Mast → Bloom's side-table.

§5 · Key themes

Ten threads through the hour of music.

♪

Music

Schema-art Music; the prose performs a fugue per canonem.

❦

Temptation

Sentiment, drink, female attention — the modern Siren-songs.

✤

The body

Bronze hair, snapped garters, beer-foam — flesh as music.

✜

Boylan & 4 p.m.

The chapter coincides with the appointed hour of the adultery.

✺

Restraint

Bloom's letter-writing is the chapter's quietest heroism.

♪

Patriotism

The Croppy Boy and national sentiment as Siren-song.

❦

Anti-epic

The hero's escape sounds — literally — like a fart.

✤

Memory

Bloom's mind ranges over Molly, Rudy, Milly while music plays.

✜

Language

The chapter's deepest Siren is its own seductive style.

✺

Tap, tap, tap

The blind piano-tuner's cane: a counter-rhythm to the song.

§6 · Quotations & close reading

Homer beside Joyce.

Homer

"First you will come to the Sirens, who bewitch all men that approach them. … There is no homecoming for the man who draws near them unawares and hears the Sirens' voices."

Odyssey, Book XII (Circe to Odysseus)

Joyce

"Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing. Imperthnthn thnthnthn."

Ulysses, Episode 11 (overture)

Why this matters

Homer's warning is a sober speech; Joyce's warning is a fragmented sound-cluster. The chapter is announcing, from its first words, that meaning will arrive as music before it arrives as sense.

Homer

"Bind me with a hard bond, that I may stay there in my place, upright in the mast-step, and let the ropes' ends be fastened to the mast itself."

Odyssey, Book XII (Odysseus' instructions)

Joyce

"Bloom unwound slowly the elastic band of his packet. … Wrote on. … Sad. Bored."

Ulysses, Episode 11

Why this matters

Odysseus' ropes become Bloom's elastic band; the hero's mast becomes a side-table in a dining room. Joyce keeps the gesture (a small physical act of binding oneself to the present) and changes its scale to the domestic.

Homer

"But when the men's eager rowing had brought the well-built ship within hail, they raised their loud song."

Odyssey, Book XII

Joyce

"—When first I saw that form endearing… Sorrow from me seemed to depart."

Ulysses, Episode 11 (Simon Dedalus singing M'appari)

Why this matters

The Homeric Siren-song is unrepresentable — Homer only reports its effect. Joyce gives us the song itself, in Italian opera and English ballad, and asks the reader to do what Odysseus does: hear it, feel it, and refuse to sink.

§7 · Modernity vs Epic

A divine voice, rewritten as a hotel bar.

Homer

Divine song, ship and rope

A demigod hero is bound to a wooden mast and hears an otherworldly voice promising perfect knowledge. The temptation is metaphysical, and the survival is physical (the rope holds).

Joyce

Pub song, side-table and pen

A modern man sits in a hotel dining room and hears very ordinary songs about lost love while his wife is unfaithful across town. The temptation is sentiment, and the survival is moral (he keeps writing).

Joyce keeps the act of bound, attentive hearing and changes everything else — the wax in the ears becomes a pen on a page.

§8 · Why this episode matters

The novel's most musical hour — and Bloom's quietest victory.

Sirens is the chapter in which Joyce most openly puts style on the page as a temptation. The opening overture, the alliterative trills, the broken words pretending to be grace-notes — these are written to seduce the reader, exactly as the songs in the room seduce the drinkers. To read the chapter is to be the man at the mast.

And while the prose sings, the plot is brutally simple. At 4 p.m. Molly meets Boylan; at 4 p.m. Bloom sits writing a letter to another woman he will never meet, and refuses to break. The novel's whole moral case for Bloom is made in this hour of held composure.

The wax in the ears becomes a pen on the page; the rope becomes a quiet refusal to drink another whiskey.

Continue

Back to Episode 9: Scylla & Charybdis →

Continue

Read the Episode 11 guide →

Continue

Leopold Bloom guide →

Continue

All Homeric Parallels →

§9 · FAQ

Quick answers.

Joyce maps Episode 11 onto Book 12 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus sails past the Sirens — singing women whose voices lure sailors to their deaths. Joyce calls his chapter 'Sirens' because the bronze and gold barmaids of the Ormond Hotel bar, the singing of patriotic ballads at the piano, and the seductive music of language itself all combine to threaten Bloom with the most modern of shipwrecks: distraction, sentimentality, and the knowledge that, at this very moment across town, his wife is meeting her lover.