Both are intellectual sons living in the shadow of an absent father. Telemachus waits for Odysseus to return from Troy; Stephen's father John is alive but emotionally and spiritually absent. Stephen's fatherlessness is inward — a question of inheritance, art and identity rather than a missing body.
Episode I · Telemachus · The Homeric Blueprint
Telemachus: Joyce Rewrites Homer.
Episode 1 of Ulysses mirrors the opening of Homer's Odyssey — but transforms an ancient epic into an intensely modern story of identity, exile, grief and inheritance.
"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead…"
S
Stephen Dedalus
Modern Telemachus
T
Telemachus
Son of Odysseus
B
Buck Mulligan
Mocking usurper
O
Odysseus
Absent king
H
Haines
English visitor
A
Athena
Divine mentor
Plain-English mode
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§1 · Foundations
Why Homer matters to Ulysses.
Joyce used Homer's Odyssey as the secret scaffolding of his novel. Every episode loosely parallels a moment from the ancient poem, and Episode 1 corresponds to Book 1 of the Odyssey — the opening, when the son is left alone with the suitors.
Joyce called this chapter Telemachus. Stephen Dedalus steps into that role: a young man under pressure, surrounded by louder voices, waiting — though he does not yet know it — for a father he has not met.
- c. 8th c. BCEHomeric Greece
The Odyssey composed
01 - 16 June 1904Dublin
The single day of Ulysses
02 - 1922Publication
Ulysses appears in Paris
03 - TodayModern Readers
Still climbing the tower
04
"The parallels are not exact repetitions but imaginative transformations."
§2 · Odyssey Primer
Book 1 of the Odyssey — in brief.
Ten years after Troy fell, Odysseus has still not come home. His palace at Ithaca is in disarray. A crowd of suitors courts his wife Penelope, eats his livestock and treats his halls as their own.
His son Telemachus is almost a man, but not quite. He is uncertain of his authority and unsure of his own name. Then the goddess Athena appears, disguised as the old family friend Mentor, and tells him plainly: stand up, sail out, and ask after your father.
⌂
Exile
♁
Father
≈
Wandering
✦
Homecoming
The themes that pour out of this opening — inheritance, maturity, identity, the question of what it means to be a son — are the same themes Joyce will inherit and translate into a Dublin morning two and a half millennia later.
§3 · The Parallels
How Joyce maps Homer onto Dublin.
Six correspondences between the opening of the Odyssey and the opening of Ulysses — characters, spaces and impulses that Joyce translates rather than copies.
Homer · Book 1
Telemachus
→
Joyce · Telemachus
Stephen Dedalus
Both are intellectual sons living in the shadow of an absent father. Telemachus waits for Odysseus to return from Troy; Stephen's father John is alive but emotionally and spiritually absent. Stephen's fatherlessness is inward — a question of inheritance, art and identity rather than a missing body.
— I am another now and yet the same.
paralysisinheritanceartistic identityuncertainty
All six parallels, at a glance.
Bloom is the modern Odysseus — absent from Episode 1 but the gravitational centre of the whole novel. Where Homer's hero is a warrior-king, Bloom is humane, ordinary, compassionate. Stephen does not yet know him; the entire book is the slow drift of son toward symbolic father.
Athena descends, disguised as Mentor, and tells Telemachus to act. Modern Dublin has no such clarity. Joyce scatters the guiding voice across literature, memory, art and the lost maternal echo. Stephen is intellectually alone — the only counsel he hears is his own.
In Ithaca the suitors consume the absent king's household. In Sandycove, Mulligan performs his mock-Mass on the roof of a tower Stephen pays for, while Haines, the polite English visitor, studies Ireland like a specimen. Stephen is dispossessed in his own home.
Both are contested domestic spaces. The Greek palace is overrun by guests; the squat military tower is shared by three uneasy men. Neither feels like a true home — only a place where a son works out what home should mean.
Telemachus sails to Pylos and Sparta. Stephen merely walks into Dublin — but the inner journey is the same. He is looking for an authority worth answering to, and by nightfall he will have walked, unknowing, toward Bloom.
§4 · The Through-line
The search for the father.
01
Telemachus
Sails from Ithaca to seek news of Odysseus.
02
Stephen
Walks Dublin, looking for an authority worth answering to.
03
Bloom
Will, by night, become the symbolic father Stephen never named.
§5 · Constellation
Who's Who: Homeric counterparts.
Click a figure to see who they answer to across the centuries.
HintTap any figure in the constellation to reveal their Homeric counterpart and connected relationships.
Linati Schema
Sent to Carlo Linati in 1920. The earliest and most thematic map — assigns each episode an organ, an art, symbols and a Homeric persona. For Telemachus: no organ yet (the body of Stephen is still being formed).
Gilbert Schema
Shared with Stuart Gilbert for his 1930 study. Cleaner and more widely cited. For Telemachus: scene — the tower; hour — 8 a.m.; art — theology; colour — white, gold; symbol — heir.
Joyce's framework
Joyce himself spoke of the Homeric structure as scaffolding to be removed once the building stood. Read with the schemas open, but don't let them flatten the prose.
Joyce's Homeric correspondences are suggestive rather than rigid. Critics often disagree on exact mappings.
§6 · Themes
Eight threads from Homer to Joyce.
Themes that begin in Book 1 of the Odyssey and surface, transformed, in the opening of Ulysses.
♁
Fatherhood
Telemachus seeks his father; Stephen seeks any father worth the name. Joyce makes the father-quest the emotional engine of the book.
⌂
Exile
Odysseus exiled from Ithaca; Stephen exiled within his own home. Both displacements ache the same.
✦
Identity
Who am I in this house, this nation, this morning? Stephen's question is Telemachus's question, modernised.
≈
Usurpation
The suitors eat Odysseus's bread; Mulligan rents Stephen's authority. Both stories begin with the rightful heir crowded out.
☉
Colonialism
Haines is the polite face of empire — Ithaca occupied by another name. The Homeric outsider becomes a 19th-century anthropologist.
✎
Art & Intellect
Where Telemachus reaches for arms, Stephen reaches for thought. The weapons of the modern son are language, irony and aesthetic theory.
✠
Spiritual Homelessness
Stephen has lost his mother, his faith and his sense of vocation. The Homeric hearth has gone cold.
❀
Modernity Replacing Myth
Epic becomes interior monologue; the sea-voyage becomes a walk. Joyce shows that myth survives by being secularised.
§7 · Close Reading
Four lines, side by side.
Hover or tap the highlighted phrases for context.
Ulysses · opening line
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossedHighlighted by editors — see Why this matters below..
Why this matters
The crossed mirror and razor are a quiet parody of the cross at the altar — Mulligan parodies the Mass before he speaks. Joyce is already telling us that religion in Stephen's world has been hollowed into performance.
Odyssey · Book 1 (Butler trans., 1900)
Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious heroHighlighted by editors — see Why this matters below. who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.
Why this matters
Homer opens by naming his hero's defining quality — cunning, mētis. Joyce will withhold Bloom for fifty pages, but when he arrives, his quality is the modern equivalent: humane intelligence.
Ulysses · closing word of Episode 1
— UsurperHighlighted by editors — see Why this matters below..
Why this matters
One word, set apart, given to Stephen alone. It names Mulligan but also Haines, the British Empire, the Catholic church, history itself. Every theme of the episode collapses into it.
Odyssey · Book 1, Athena to Telemachus
You should not cling to your boyhood any longer — it is time you were a manHighlighted by editors — see Why this matters below..
Why this matters
The Homeric trigger Stephen never quite hears. In Ulysses no goddess descends — only Mulligan mocking, and Stephen must call himself to action through art instead.
§8 · Why this matters
Why Homer still matters to Joyce — and to us.
Joyce takes the largest available story — a man trying to come home — and re-stages it inside one ordinary Dublin day. Myth does not disappear in modernity. It moves indoors.
Understanding Homer unlocks the hidden layers of Ulysses without requiring a classics degree. The Odyssey gives Joyce shape; Dublin gives him substance.
"Telemachus" introduces the emotional architecture of the whole novel: a son cut off, a father still arriving, a home that does not feel like one.
That father-son search becomes the spine of the book. Every chapter is, on some level, Stephen walking unknowingly toward Bloom — and Bloom walking unknowingly toward Stephen.
In Joyce's hands, the ancient voyage becomes a modern search for meaning.
§9 · FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Why is Episode 1 of Ulysses called Telemachus?
Joyce structured Ulysses as a modern retelling of Homer's Odyssey. Each episode shadows a moment from the epic, and the opening corresponds to Book 1 — the Telemachy — where the absent hero's son is left to deal with intruders in his father's house.
Who is Stephen Dedalus in Homeric terms?
Stephen Dedalus is the modern Telemachus: a young man under pressure, dispossessed in his own home, waiting (without knowing it) for a father figure who will only arrive much later in the novel in the form of Leopold Bloom.
How closely does Ulysses follow The Odyssey?
The parallels are suggestive rather than literal. Joyce uses the Odyssey as scaffolding — character roles, emotional patterns, contested spaces — but transforms ancient epic into the inner life of three Dubliners on a single day, 16 June 1904.
Is Leopold Bloom Odysseus?
Yes, Bloom is Joyce's modern Odysseus — a wandering, humane, deeply ordinary man whose long day across Dublin echoes the ten-year journey home from Troy. The novel's emotional climax is the meeting of this modern Odysseus with his unacknowledged Telemachus, Stephen.
What is the Homeric schema?
Joyce circulated two schemas — the Linati (1920) and the Gilbert (1921) — mapping each episode of Ulysses to a Homeric scene, an organ, an art, a colour and a symbol. They are interpretive guides, not rigid keys; scholars often disagree on individual mappings.