How to use this glossary
Skim it before you start to recognise the major names, or dip in whenever a term trips you up mid-chapter. Each definition is meant to be quick and clear; where there's more to say, a link carries you to a full explainer. This is a living reference — we add entries as the guide expands, so check back as you read deeper into the book.
Key terms and names in Ulysses
- The 1922 first edition
- Ulysses was first published in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday, by Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company. It was printed in Dijon in an edition of 1,000 copies, in a blue cover chosen to match the Greek flag. Read more
- “A man of genius makes no mistakes”
- “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” Stephen says it in the National Library in Episode 9, defending his theory of Shakespeare: a great artist's apparent errors are chosen, and lead to new truths. Read more
- “A nation is the same people living in the same place”
- “A nation is the same people living in the same place” is Bloom's answer in Episode 12 when the drinkers ask him what a nation is. It is a modest, practical definition, set against the Citizen's fierce nationalism, and the pub laughs at it. Read more
- “A shout in the street”
- “A shout in the street” is Stephen's definition of God in Episode 2. Mr Deasy has just said that all history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. Stephen points to the noise of boys playing hockey outside: that is God. Read more
- Agenbite of inwit
- "Agenbite of inwit" is Middle English for "remorse of conscience" (literally the "again-bite" of the "inner wit"). It comes from the title of a 14th-century religious book. In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus repeats it to himself because he feels guilty for refusing to pray at his dying mother's bedside. Read more
- Agendath Netaim
- Agendath Netaim was a planters' company advertising plots of land in Ottoman Palestine to be planted with orange groves and olives. Bloom reads its leaflet in the butcher's shop in Episode 4. It stirs dreams of a Jewish homeland, then a vision of a dead land. Read more
- “Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?”
- “Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?” is Stephen's question in Episode 3 as he walks on the beach with his eyes shut. Testing whether the world still exists when he cannot see it, he listens to his boots crushing shells and wonders if time and space go on without him. Read more
- Barney Kiernan's
- Barney Kiernan's is the pub on Little Britain Street where Episode 12, “Cyclops”, takes place. Bloom goes there to meet Martin Cunningham about Dignam's insurance and ends up in a row with the Citizen, who throws a biscuit tin at him. Read more
- Bella Cohen
- Bella Cohen is the madam of the brothel at 82 Tyrone Street where Circe reaches its climax. In Bloom's hallucination she changes into Bello, a man who humiliates him. She is Joyce's Circe, the enchantress who turns men into swine. Read more
- Blazes Boylan
- Hugh “Blazes” Boylan is a flashy Dublin concert manager who is organising Molly Bloom's singing tour, and who becomes her lover at 4 pm on 16 June 1904. Bloom knows the meeting is coming and spends the day trying not to think about it. Read more
- Bloomsday
- The annual celebration of Ulysses held every 16 June, the day on which the whole novel takes place. Read more
Quotation, context and references
—16 June 1904.
Episode 10, Wandering Rocks: Miss Dunne types the date in Boylan's office In plain English
Bloomsday is named after Leopold Bloom. Each 16 June, readers in Dublin and around the world retrace the day of the novel: breakfast in Eccles Street, a gorgonzola sandwich at Davy Byrne's, readings at the Martello tower.
Literary context
Joyce chose 16 June 1904 because it was the day he first went walking with Nora Barnacle, who became his wife. The first organised Bloomsday was held in Dublin in 1954, on the fiftieth anniversary, when a group of writers including Flann O'Brien and Patrick Kavanagh set out to follow the route of the book.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 10, "Wandering Rocks"
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
In the Reading Room
- “Bronze by gold”
- “Bronze by gold” refers to the two barmaids of the Ormond Hotel, the bronze-haired Miss Douce and the golden-haired Miss Kennedy. The phrase opens Episode 11, “Sirens”, the musical episode, where Joyce writes prose as if it were a piece of music. Read more
- Buck Mulligan
- Stephen's witty, blasphemous flatmate, a medical student. He opens the novel parodying the Catholic Mass at the tower. Read more
Quotation, context and references
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Episode 1, Telemachus: the first words spoken in the novel In plain English
Malachi "Buck" Mulligan is a medical student and Stephen's flatmate in the tower. He is funny, loud and mocking. He jokes about religion, about Stephen's mother, and about Ireland, and Stephen resents him.
Literary context
The Latin means "I will go up to the altar of God", the opening words of the old Mass. Mulligan was based on Joyce's real friend Oliver St John Gogarty. In the Homeric scheme he is Antinous, the arrogant suitor who takes over Odysseus's house; Stephen leaves the tower key with him and does not return.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 1, "Telemachus"
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
- Catechism style (Ithaca)
- Episode 17, “Ithaca”, is written as a series of over 300 questions and answers, like a church catechism or a science exam. Bloom brings Stephen home, and every detail is reported coldly and exactly, down to the route of the water from the reservoir to his tap. Read more
- Chrysostomos
- Greek for 'golden-mouthed.' A single word in Stephen's mind in Episode 1, prompted by Mulligan's gold-filled teeth — an early taste of interior monologue. Read more
Quotation, context and references
his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos.
Episode 1, Telemachus In plain English
Mulligan has gold fillings, so Stephen thinks "golden-mouthed". There is no "he thought": the word just appears on the page, and the reader has to work out whose thought it is.
Literary context
Chrysostomos was the nickname of St John Chrysostom, a 4th-century preacher famous for his eloquence; it suits the talkative Mulligan. This is one of the first moments where Joyce slips into a character's mind without warning, which becomes the book's main technique.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 1, "Telemachus"
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
- The Citizen
- The aggressive nationalist Bloom argues with in 'Cyclops' (Episode 12) — Joyce's one-eyed Cyclops. Read more
Quotation, context and references
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point
Episode 12, Cyclops In plain English
The Citizen is a loud nationalist drinking in Barney Kiernan's pub with his dog Garryowen. He mocks Bloom as a foreigner and a Jew. When Bloom answers that Christ was a Jew, the Citizen throws a biscuit tin after him as he drives away.
Literary context
He is Joyce's Cyclops, the one-eyed giant: a man who sees the world from one narrow viewpoint. He is partly based on Michael Cusack, founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 12, "Cyclops"
- Homer, The Odyssey, Book 9
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
- The cracked lookingglass of a servant
- “The cracked lookingglass of a servant” is Stephen Dedalus's bitter description of Irish art in Episode 1. Holding Mulligan's cracked shaving mirror, stolen from a maid, he says Irish art can only reflect itself in a broken mirror owned by someone in service to another nation. Read more
- The Croppy Boy
- “The Croppy Boy” is an Irish ballad about a young rebel of 1798 who goes to confession, only to find the priest is a British officer in disguise who has him hanged. Ben Dollard sings it in the Ormond bar in Episode 11, and the bar is moved to silence. Read more
- Cuckoo
- “Cuckoo” is the cry of the cuckoo clock that ends Bloom's part of Episode 13. The cuckoo lays eggs in other birds' nests, and the word gives us “cuckold”, a man whose wife is unfaithful. The clock calls it out to Bloom, whose wife has just been with Blazes Boylan. Read more
- Davy Byrne's
- Davy Byrne's is the pub on Duke Street where Bloom eats a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and drinks a glass of burgundy in Episode 8. He calls it a “moral pub”. It is still open, and is crowded with readers every Bloomsday. Read more
- Deshil Holles Eamus
- “Deshil Holles Eamus” is the chant that opens Episode 14. It mixes Irish (“deiseal”, turning right, sunwise, for luck), the name of Holles Street, where the maternity hospital stands, and Latin “eamus” (“let us go”): roughly, “let us go to Holles Street, sunwise.” Read more
- Eccles Street
- The Blooms' home address (number 7), where Bloom's day begins in 'Calypso.' Read more
Quotation, context and references
number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.
Episode 17, Ithaca: Bloom arrives home with Stephen In plain English
7 Eccles Street, in north inner-city Dublin, is the Blooms' house. The day begins there in "Calypso" and ends there in "Ithaca" and "Penelope".
Literary context
It is Bloom's Ithaca, the home Odysseus struggles to return to. The real house was the home of Joyce's friend J.F. Byrne. It was demolished, but its front door is kept at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 4, 17 and 18
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
- Elijah
- “Elijah is coming” is the headline of a religious flyer, a “throwaway”, handed to Bloom in Episode 8. He crumples it and throws it into the Liffey, and it floats through Wandering Rocks. In Circe, Elijah himself appears. In the Bible, the prophet's return announces the end of the world. Read more
- Epi oinopa ponton
- “Epi oinopa ponton” is Homer's Greek for “on the wine-dark sea”, one of the Odyssey's best-known phrases. Buck Mulligan quotes it in Episode 1 just after calling Dublin Bay “the snotgreen sea”, mixing Homer's grandeur with Dublin slang. Read more
- Epiphany
- For Joyce, an epiphany was a sudden revelation of the truth of something, often in an ordinary moment, a phrase or a gesture. As a young man he wrote short prose “epiphanies”. In Proteus Stephen mocks his own youthful ambition to send them to all the great libraries of the world. Read more
- Episode
- Joyce's term for the 18 chapters of Ulysses, each set at a particular hour and place and written in a distinct style. Read more
Quotation, context and references
It is the epic of two races (Israel-Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life).
James Joyce, letter to Carlo Linati, 21 September 1920 In plain English
Ulysses has 18 sections, usually called episodes. Each covers roughly an hour of the day, has its own setting and uses its own style: a newspaper, a musical fugue, a play, a question-and-answer catechism.
Literary context
The book prints no chapter titles, only three parts (I, II, III). The episode titles, such as "Telemachus" or "Penelope", come from Joyce's schemas, where he also gave each episode an hour, an organ of the body, an art and a colour.
References
- James Joyce, letter to Carlo Linati, 21 September 1920
- Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses (1930)
In the Reading Room
- Father Conmee
- Father John Conmee is a real Jesuit priest, superior of the Jesuit house on Gardiner Street in 1904. Episode 10 opens with him setting out to walk to Artane, greeting parishioners, noticing everything and thinking pleasant, worldly thoughts. Read more
- The first line of Ulysses
- The first line of Ulysses is "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." It opens the novel at the Martello tower in Sandycove on the morning of 16 June 1904, with Mulligan mock-celebrating Mass using his shaving bowl. Read more
- Free indirect discourse
- Free indirect discourse is narration in the third person (“he”, “she”) that takes on a character's own words and attitudes, without “he thought”. Ulysses uses it constantly. The first half of Nausicaa is the best example: the narrator speaks in Gerty MacDowell's romantic-magazine voice. Read more
- The Freeman's Journal
- The Freeman's Journal was a Dublin nationalist daily newspaper. Bloom sells advertising space for it, carries a copy all day, and visits its offices in Episode 7, “Aeolus”, which is set in the Freeman and Evening Telegraph building. Read more
- Fugue per canonem (Sirens)
- Joyce described the technique of Episode 11, “Sirens”, as “fuga per canonem”, a fugue according to rule. The episode opens with an overture of fragments, then repeats and develops them like musical themes, in a hotel bar full of singing. Read more
- The Gabler edition
- The Gabler edition, “Ulysses: The Corrected Text” (1984), was edited by Hans Walter Gabler, who rebuilt the text from Joyce's manuscripts and proofs and made about 5,000 corrections. The most famous restores a line about love in Episode 9. Read more
- Gerty MacDowell
- Gerty MacDowell is the young woman Bloom watches on Sandymount Strand at sunset in Episode 13. The first half of the episode is told in the gushing style of the romantic magazines she reads. She leans back to show her legs; Bloom masturbates; then she limps away. Read more
- Gigantism (Cyclops)
- Gigantism is Joyce's name for the technique of Episode 12, “Cyclops”. The pub talk is broken by more than thirty parodies that inflate things to enormous size, legal, heroic, scientific or newspaper styles, until the Citizen becomes a giant hero of Irish legend. Read more
- Glasnevin Cemetery
- Glasnevin is Dublin's great Catholic cemetery, where Paddy Dignam is buried in Episode 6. Bloom watches the burial, thinks about death with frank curiosity, and notices a stranger in a macintosh. Parnell and O'Connell are buried there too. Read more
- Haines
- Haines is an English student from Oxford staying at the Martello tower in Episode 1. He studies Irish folklore and language, and kept Stephen awake raving in his sleep about a black panther. To Stephen he stands for the English conqueror who finds Ireland quaint. Read more
- “The heaventree of stars”
- “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit” is the sight Bloom and Stephen see when they step into the garden of 7 Eccles Street in Episode 17. A rare burst of poetry in a chapter written as dry questions and answers, it pictures the night sky as a tree of fruit. Read more
- "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"
- "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" is spoken by Stephen Dedalus to Mr Deasy, the headmaster of the school where he teaches, in "Nestor" (Episode 2). Stephen means that the weight of the past, Irish, Catholic and personal, feels like a bad dream he cannot escape. Read more
- Holles Street
- Holles Street is the home of the National Maternity Hospital, where Episode 14 takes place at about 10 pm. Bloom visits to ask after Mina Purefoy, who is in labour, and finds Stephen drinking with medical students. Read more
- Homeric parallels
- The loose mapping of Ulysses onto Homer's Odyssey, with each episode echoing a scene from the ancient poem. Read more
Quotation, context and references
The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton.
Episode 1, Telemachus In plain English
The title Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus. Each of the 18 episodes loosely matches a part of Homer's Odyssey, but the links are often comic: a newspaper office stands in for the cave of the winds, a pub bully for the Cyclops.
Literary context
The episode names (Telemachus, Calypso, Cyclops and so on) are not in the printed book. Joyce gave them to friends and in the schemas he drew up for Carlo Linati and Stuart Gilbert, and readers have used them ever since.
References
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses (1930)
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
In the Reading Room
- Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa
- “Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!” is the midwife's cry as she lifts a newborn boy, repeated three times near the opening of Episode 14. It anticipates the birth of Mina Purefoy's son later in the episode. Read more
- Howth Head
- Howth Head is the headland north of Dublin Bay where Bloom proposed to Molly sixteen years before the novel, lying among the rhododendrons. Both of them remember it on 16 June 1904, and Molly's memory of it closes the book. Read more
- I AM A
- Bloom writes “I. AM. A.” with his stick in the sand of Sandymount Strand at the end of Episode 13, then stops: there is no room. The unfinished message to Gerty MacDowell has never been completed, and readers have offered many endings for it. Read more
- In the heart of the Hibernian metropolis
- “IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS” is the first headline in Episode 7, “Aeolus”. Joyce breaks the episode into short sections under newspaper-style headings, matching its setting in a newspaper office, and the headlines get wilder as it goes on. Read more
- "Ineluctable modality of the visible"
- "Ineluctable modality of the visible" opens "Proteus" (Episode 3). It means, roughly, "the unavoidable way things present themselves to the eye". Stephen Dedalus, walking alone on Sandymount Strand, is thinking about how we know the world through our senses, and testing it by closing his eyes. Read more
- Interior monologue
- The technique of rendering a character's unspoken thoughts directly on the page, as they actually occur. The engine of the book's style. Read more
Quotation, context and references
Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion.
Episode 8, Lestrygonians In plain English
Interior monologue puts a character's thoughts on the page as they come: unfinished sentences, jumps from one idea to another, memories breaking in. Bloom's thoughts are short and practical; Stephen's are long and learned; Molly's run on without stopping.
Literary context
Joyce said he got the idea from Édouard Dujardin's novel Les Lauriers sont coupés (1887). Ulysses made it famous and it shaped later writers such as Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 3, 8 and 18
- Édouard Dujardin, Les Lauriers sont coupés (1887)
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
In the Reading Room
- Introibo ad altare Dei
- “Introibo ad altare Dei” is Latin for “I will go up to the altar of God”, the opening words of the old Catholic Mass. Buck Mulligan intones them on the roof of the Martello tower, holding up his shaving bowl like a chalice. They are the first words spoken in Ulysses. Read more
- K.M.R.I.A.
- K.M.R.I.A. stands for “kiss my royal Irish arse”. It is the editor Myles Crawford's reply, in Episode 7, when Bloom asks him to give Alexander Keyes a free puff in the paper to win an advertisement. Bloom quietly decides it is not a good moment to ask. Read more
- Kinch
- Kinch is Buck Mulligan's nickname for Stephen Dedalus. The name is usually read as the sound of a blade, something sharp and thin like Stephen's wit. It is the first name Mulligan shouts down the tower stairs. Read more
- Là ci darem la mano
- “Là ci darem la mano” (“There we will give each other our hands”) is the seduction duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Molly is to sing it on tour. Bloom hums it all day and worries about the line “voglio e non vorrei”, “I want to and I wouldn't like to”. Read more
- The last line of Ulysses
- The last words of Ulysses are "and yes I said yes I will Yes." They end Molly Bloom's long, unpunctuated monologue in the final episode, "Penelope", as she remembers the day Leopold Bloom proposed to her on Howth Head and she agreed to marry him. Read more
- Leopold Bloom
- The central character: a kind, curious advertising canvasser whose wanderings give the novel its shape. Joyce's modern Odysseus. Read more
Quotation, context and references
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.
Episode 4, Calypso: the first line about Bloom In plain English
Bloom is 38, Jewish by descent, and sells advertising space for the Freeman's Journal. He is curious, kind and often lonely. We follow his thoughts across Dublin from breakfast until he climbs into bed after 2 am.
Literary context
He is Joyce's modern Odysseus. Where Homer's hero fights monsters to get home, Bloom faces small humiliations, grief for his dead son Rudy, and the knowledge that his wife is meeting another man that afternoon. His return home in "Ithaca" mirrors Odysseus's return.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 4–18
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
In the Reading Room
- “The limp father of thousands”
- “The limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower” are the last words of Episode 5. Bloom imagines himself in the bath he is about to take, his body floating, his penis drifting in the water like a flower. It is a dreamy, comic, sad image of a man at rest and unfulfilled. Read more
- The Linati and Gilbert schemas
- The Linati and Gilbert schemas are two charts Joyce made to explain Ulysses. They list each episode's Homeric title, hour, organ of the body, art, colour, symbol and technique. Joyce sent one to Carlo Linati in 1920 and lent another to Stuart Gilbert, who printed it in 1930. Read more
- “Love, I mean the opposite of hatred”
- “Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.” Bloom says this in Barney Kiernan's pub in Episode 12, after the Citizen's attacks on Jews and the English. Asked what real life is, he answers simply that it is love, then leaves, which the drinkers mock. Read more
- Love's Old Sweet Song
- “Love's Old Sweet Song” is a popular Victorian ballad by J. L. Molloy that Molly is to sing on her concert tour, organised by Boylan. She mentions it at breakfast in Episode 4, and its phrases echo through Bloom's day, especially in Sirens. Read more
- The man in the macintosh
- The man in the macintosh is an unnamed stranger in a raincoat whom Bloom notices at Paddy Dignam's funeral in "Hades" (Episode 6). He turns up again several times during the day. Joyce never reveals who he is, and he is one of the book's most famous unsolved puzzles. Read more
- Martello tower
- The squat coastal defence tower at Sandycove where Stephen lodges in Episode 1. A real building, now a Joyce museum. Read more
Quotation, context and references
—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?
Episode 1, Telemachus In plain English
Martello towers are small round forts built along the Irish coast to guard against a French invasion during the Napoleonic wars. Mulligan rents the one at Sandycove, and the novel opens on its roof.
Literary context
Joyce himself stayed in the tower for a few nights in September 1904 with Oliver St John Gogarty, the model for Mulligan. Mulligan calls it the omphalos, the navel of the world. It is now the James Joyce Tower and Museum.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 1, "Telemachus"
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
- Martha Clifford and Henry Flower
- Martha Clifford is a woman Bloom writes to in secret under the false name Henry Flower. He collects her letter at the post office in Episode 5. Their flirtation is all on paper; they have never met. The letter includes a pressed flower and a famous mistake. Read more
- The Mass parody
- The novel opens with Buck Mulligan parodying the Catholic Mass: holding up his shaving bowl like a chalice, saying Latin words, and pretending to turn the lather into Christ's body. The parody returns in Circe as a Black Mass. Read more
- “Me. And me now.”
- “Me. And me now.” is Bloom's thought in Davy Byrne's in Episode 8 after he remembers kissing Molly on Howth Head years before. Four words set the happy young man against the lonely middle-aged one, sixteen years later, on the day his wife will be unfaithful. Read more
- Met him pike hoses (metempsychosis)
- "Met him pike hoses" is Molly Bloom's mangled version of "metempsychosis", a Greek word for the transmigration of souls: the belief that a soul is reborn in another body after death. She asks Bloom what it means in "Calypso" (Episode 4), and the phrase becomes a running joke and a key idea. Read more
- Milly Bloom
- Milly Bloom is Leopold and Molly's daughter, who turns fifteen on 15 June 1904. She is working in a photographer's shop in Mullingar, and her chatty letter arrives with the morning post in Episode 4. Bloom worries about her and a young student she has met. Read more
- Mkgnao
- “Mkgnao!” is the sound Bloom's cat makes in the kitchen of 7 Eccles Street in Episode 4. Joyce spells the cat's miaow exactly as he hears it, and varies it as the cat grows more insistent: “Mrkgnao!” and then “Gurrhr!” It is one of the book's most-loved small details. Read more
- Molly Bloom
- Leopold's wife, a singer, whose long unpunctuated monologue closes the book on the word 'yes.' Joyce's Penelope. Read more
Quotation, context and references
I was a Flower of the mountain yes
Episode 18, Penelope: Molly remembers her girlhood in Gibraltar In plain English
Marion (Molly) Bloom is a concert singer, born in Gibraltar. She spends most of the book offstage, but she is on Bloom's mind all day. In the final episode we hear her thoughts directly, without punctuation, for page after page.
Literary context
She is Joyce's Penelope, the faithful wife of the Odyssey, but turned around: on 16 June she sleeps with Blazes Boylan. Joyce partly modelled her voice on the letters of Nora Barnacle. Her monologue ends the book on "Yes".
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 4 and 18
- Homer, The Odyssey
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
In the Reading Room
- Monto
- Monto was Dublin's red-light district around Montgomery Street, north of the Liffey, one of the largest in Europe around 1904. Joyce calls it Nighttown, and Episode 15, “Circe”, is set there at midnight. Read more
- Mr Deasy
- Garrett Deasy is the headmaster of the school in Dalkey where Stephen teaches in Episode 2. A pompous Ulster unionist, he pays Stephen his wages, lectures him on thrift, blames women and Jews for history's disasters, and asks him to place a letter about foot-and-mouth disease in the papers. Read more
- “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls”
- “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls” is the first sentence of Episode 4, “Calypso”, and the reader's first sight of Bloom. Joyce introduces his hero through his appetite, a warm, physical, slightly comic opening that sets Bloom apart from the brooding Stephen. Read more
- Nighttown
- Dublin's red-light district and the setting of 'Circe' (Episode 15), where the day's repressed thoughts erupt into hallucination. Read more
Quotation, context and references
The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown
Episode 15, Circe: the opening stage direction In plain English
Nighttown was Joyce's name for the Monto, Dublin's red-light district near the docks. Bloom follows Stephen there around midnight. In the brothel of Bella Cohen, fears, fantasies and memories come to life as hallucinations.
Literary context
In the Odyssey, Circe is the witch who turns Odysseus's men into pigs. Joyce turns the transformations into a dream play in which Bloom becomes mayor, a woman and a defendant at his own trial.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 15, "Circe"
- Homer, The Odyssey, Book 10
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
- Non serviam
- “Non serviam” is Latin for “I will not serve”, the words traditionally given to Lucifer when he rebelled against God. Stephen shouts it at his mother's ghost in Circe, refusing again to kneel and pray. It is his defiance in its purest form. Read more
- Nora Barnacle
- Nora Barnacle was James Joyce's partner and later his wife, a woman from Galway. Their first walk together, on 16 June 1904, is why Ulysses is set on that day. Her voice and letters are often seen in Molly Bloom's monologue. Read more
- Nothung
- Nothung is the magic sword in Wagner's opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. Stephen cries “Nothung!” in Circe as he raises his ashplant, like a sword, and smashes the brothel's chandelier to drive away his mother's ghost. Read more
- The Odyssey
- Homer's Odyssey is the ancient Greek epic of Odysseus (in Latin, Ulysses) and his ten-year voyage home from Troy. Joyce maps it onto one Dublin day: Bloom is Odysseus, Stephen is his son Telemachus, and Molly is his wife Penelope. Mulligan is the first to bring up the Greeks. Read more
- Omphalos
- Omphalos is Greek for “navel”. The ancient Greeks used it for the stone at Delphi that marked the centre of the world. In Ulysses Mulligan calls the Martello tower the omphalos of a new paganism, and in Proteus Stephen imagines monks gazing at their navels. Read more
- Ormond Hotel
- The Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay is the setting of Episode 11, “Sirens”. Bloom eats liver and bacon in the dining room while Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard sing in the bar, and Boylan leaves to visit Molly. Read more
- Paddy Dignam
- Paddy Dignam is the Dublin man whose funeral Bloom attends at Glasnevin Cemetery in Episode 6. He died suddenly of a stroke, helped by drink, leaving a widow and five children. Bloom spends part of the day helping to collect insurance money for the family. Read more
- Parallax
- Parallax is the way an object seems to shift position when seen from two different places. Bloom remembers the word from a popular astronomy book in Episode 8 and admits he never understood it. It suits a novel that shows Dublin from many viewpoints. Read more
- Parnell
- Charles Stewart Parnell led the Irish fight for Home Rule until 1890, when his affair with Katharine O'Shea was exposed and the Church and his party turned on him. He died in 1891. In Ulysses, he is everywhere: a lost leader, a betrayed man, and a symbol of Ireland's divisions. Read more
- Parody of English prose styles (Oxen of the Sun)
- Episode 14, “Oxen of the Sun”, imitates the history of English prose in order, from Latin-flavoured early writing through Malory, Bunyan, Swift and Dickens to modern slang. The growth of style mirrors the growth of a baby in the womb, as Mina Purefoy gives birth. Read more
- “Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion”
- “Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion” is Bloom's thought in Episode 8, as hungry, he walks through Dublin at lunchtime. It sums up his humane, practical outlook: the great events of history may come down to whether a powerful man has had a good lunch. Read more
- “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch”
- “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch” are the opening words of Episode 8. Bloom passes a sweetshop on O'Connell Street at about 1 pm and his hungry mind lists the sweets in the window. The episode is all about food and appetite. Read more
- Plumtree's Potted Meat
- Plumtree's Potted Meat is a tinned meat product whose advert Bloom reads in the Freeman's Journal in Episode 5. The slogan, “What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete”, becomes a joke about his own home: that afternoon Boylan visits Molly, and leaves the empty tin. Read more
- The potato talisman
- Bloom carries a shrivelled potato in his trouser pocket all day as a charm. It was his mother's, kept to ward off illness. He checks it as he leaves the house in Episode 4, and in Circe he takes it back from the prostitute Zoe: “A talisman. Heirloom.” Read more
- Pprrpffrrppffff
- “Pprrpffrrppffff” is Bloom's fart, the last sound of Episode 11. Bloom reads Robert Emmet's last words in a shop window, and lets go under cover of a passing tram. Joyce ends his musical episode with a final note from the body. Read more
- Rudy Bloom
- Rudy Bloom is Leopold and Molly's son, who died at eleven days old, eleven years before the novel. Bloom thinks of him throughout 16 June, and his ghost appears at the end of Circe as an eleven-year-old boy reading a book. Read more
- Sandymount Strand
- The beach where Stephen walks alone in 'Proteus' (Episode 3) and where 'Nausicaa' (Episode 13) is set. Read more
Quotation, context and references
Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?
Episode 3, Proteus In plain English
Sandymount Strand is a wide, flat beach on Dublin Bay. Stephen walks there alone in the morning; that evening, Bloom watches Gerty MacDowell on the same beach in "Nausicaa".
Literary context
The two scenes mirror each other: the young man thinking about eternity in the morning, the older man thinking about desire and loss at sunset. Both are set on the edge of the sea, which runs through the whole book.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 3 and 13
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
In the Reading Room
- “The Saviour was a jew”
- “And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.” Bloom shouts it at the Citizen as he leaves Barney Kiernan's in Episode 12, after a stream of antisemitic abuse. It is the one time Bloom fights back openly, and it nearly gets him hurt. Read more
- Seaside Girls
- “Those Lovely Seaside Girls” is a music-hall song mentioned in Milly's letter in Episode 4: a student has been singing “Boylan's song” about seaside girls. Its catchy lines run through Bloom's head all day, linking Boylan, Milly and Molly. Read more
- Shakespeare and Company
- Shakespeare and Company was Sylvia Beach's English-language bookshop and lending library in Paris, at 12 rue de l'Odéon from 1921. It published Ulysses in 1922 and was a home for writers such as Hemingway. A later shop of the same name, opened in 1951, still trades by the Seine. Read more
- Simon Dedalus
- Simon Dedalus is Stephen's father: charming, witty, a fine tenor, and a failed provider whose family lives in poverty. He rides in the funeral carriage with Bloom in Episode 6 and sings beautifully in the Ormond bar in Episode 11. Read more
- The snotgreen sea
- “The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.” is Buck Mulligan's crude, comic description of Dublin Bay in Episode 1. He is mocking the grand Homeric phrase for the sea, “wine-dark”, by replacing it with two very bodily Dublin words of his own. Read more
- Stephen Dedalus
- The young writer who opens the novel — brilliant, grieving, and adrift. Joyce's Telemachus, the searching son. Read more
Quotation, context and references
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
Episode 1, Telemachus: Buck Mulligan calls Stephen onto the tower roof In plain English
Stephen is 22, a teacher and would-be poet who has come back from Paris for his mother's death. He is clever, proud, broke and full of guilt. He dominates the first three episodes and meets Bloom properly late at night.
Literary context
Stephen first appeared as the hero of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and he is partly a portrait of Joyce himself as a young man. In the Homeric scheme he is Telemachus, the son searching for a father, and Bloom becomes a kind of father to him.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 1–3, 9, 14–17
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
In the Reading Room
- Stephen's Hamlet theory
- Stephen's Hamlet theory is his argument, set out in the National Library in Episode 9, that Shakespeare is not Hamlet but the ghost of Hamlet's father, a man betrayed by his wife. Mulligan sums it up mockingly in Episode 1: Stephen proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather. Read more
- Stream of consciousness
- The broad idea of representing the continuous flow of a character's mind; interior monologue is its most direct method. Read more
Quotation, context and references
Me. And me now.
Episode 8, Lestrygonians In plain English
Stream of consciousness is the wider idea of showing how a mind flows: thoughts, sensations, memories, all mixed. In four words Bloom moves from a happy memory to a sad comparison with his present.
Literary context
The phrase "stream of consciousness" comes from the psychologist William James, in The Principles of Psychology (1890). Critics later used it for the writing of Joyce, Woolf and Dorothy Richardson.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 8, "Lestrygonians"
- William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890)
In the Reading Room
- Sweny's pharmacy and the lemon soap
- Bloom calls at Sweny's chemist on Lincoln Place in Episode 5 to order a face lotion for Molly, and buys a bar of lemon soap. He carries it in his pocket all day. In Circe the soap rises like a sun and sings. Sweny's is still open, run by volunteers. Read more
- Sylvia Beach
- Sylvia Beach was the American bookseller who first published Ulysses, in Paris on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. Her shop, Shakespeare and Company, took on the book when no publisher in Britain or America would risk it. Read more
- Throwaway
- Throwaway is the outsider horse that wins the Ascot Gold Cup on 16 June 1904, at 20 to 1. Bloom innocently tells Bantam Lyons he was going to “throw away” his newspaper; Lyons takes it as a tip. When Throwaway wins, the pub assumes Bloom won money and is hiding it. Read more
- U.P.: up
- “U.P.: up” is the message on an anonymous postcard sent to Denis Breen in Episode 8. Breen takes it as a libel and spends the day trying to sue. Nobody knows what it means for sure; most readers take it as an insult about his sanity, his sex life, or both. Read more
- The Uncle Charles Principle
- The Uncle Charles Principle is the critic Hugh Kenner's name for Joyce's habit of letting narration pick up the vocabulary a character would use. It comes from a sentence in A Portrait of the Artist where Uncle Charles “repaired” to the outhouse, his own prim word, not the narrator's. Read more
- The US obscenity trial (1933)
- Ulysses was banned in the United States as obscene after episodes appeared in The Little Review. In the 1933 case United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, Judge John Woolsey ruled it was not obscene, and Random House published it legally in 1934. Read more
- “We can't change the country. Let us change the subject”
- “We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.” Stephen says it to Bloom in the cabman's shelter in Episode 16, around 1 am. Tired and unwilling to discuss Ireland, he ends Bloom's earnest talk about politics with a weary joke. Read more
- “The word known to all men”
- “The word known to all men” is a phrase Stephen asks about in Episodes 3, 9 and 15. In Circe he begs his dead mother's ghost to tell it to him. In the corrected text, Episode 9 answers it: the word is love. Read more
The book's history · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis
Famous lines · Episode 12, Cyclops
Famous lines · Episode 2, Nestor
Words & phrases · Episode 1, Telemachus
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 3, Proteus
Places · Episode 12, Cyclops
People · Episode 15, Circe
People · Several episodes
The book's history · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 11, Sirens
People · Episode 1, Telemachus
Techniques & style · Episode 17, Ithaca
Words & phrases · Episode 1, Telemachus
People · Episode 12, Cyclops
Famous lines · Episode 1, Telemachus
Songs & music · Episode 11, Sirens
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Places · Episode 8, Lestrygonians
Words & phrases · Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun
Places · Episode 4, Calypso
Allusions · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 1, Telemachus
Techniques & style · Several episodes
The book's history · Several episodes
People · Episode 10, Wandering Rocks
Famous lines · Episode 1, Telemachus
Techniques & style · Several episodes
Places · Several episodes
Techniques & style · Episode 11, Sirens
The book's history · Several episodes
People · Episode 13, Nausicaa
Techniques & style · Episode 12, Cyclops
Places · Episode 6, Hades
People · Episode 1, Telemachus
Famous lines · Episode 17, Ithaca
Famous lines · Episode 2, Nestor
Places · Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun
Allusions · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun
Places · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 13, Nausicaa
Techniques & style · Episode 7, Aeolus
Famous lines · Episode 3, Proteus
Techniques & style · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 1, Telemachus
Words & phrases · Episode 7, Aeolus
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Songs & music · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 18, Penelope
People · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 5, Lotus Eaters
Techniques & style · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 12, Cyclops
Songs & music · Several episodes
People · Several episodes
Places · Episode 1, Telemachus
People · Several episodes
Allusions · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 8, Lestrygonians
Words & phrases · Episode 4, Calypso
People · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 4, Calypso
People · Several episodes
Places · Episode 15, Circe
People · Episode 2, Nestor
Famous lines · Episode 4, Calypso
Places · Episode 15, Circe
Words & phrases · Episode 15, Circe
People · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 15, Circe
Allusions · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Places · Episode 11, Sirens
People · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Allusions · Several episodes
Techniques & style · Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun
Famous lines · Episode 8, Lestrygonians
Famous lines · Episode 8, Lestrygonians
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Episode 11, Sirens
People · Several episodes
Places · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 12, Cyclops
Songs & music · Several episodes
The book's history · Several episodes
People · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 1, Telemachus
People · Several episodes
Allusions · Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis
Techniques & style · Several episodes
Places · Several episodes
People · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Words & phrases · Several episodes
Techniques & style · Several episodes
The book's history · Several episodes
Famous lines · Episode 16, Eumaeus
Famous lines · Several episodes
Words, references, and techniques
Many of the trickiest moments in Ulysses are single words or buried allusions rather than whole concepts. As the glossary grows, we'll add more of these — Latin tags, Dublin slang, song titles, and the recurring motifs that knit the book together. For the techniques behind the style, start with interior monologue and the Homeric parallels.