The Movement from Lyrical to Epical and Dramatic Form: the Opening of Ulysses

Abstract

As soon as we enter into the imagined world of Ulysses, we realize that Stephen is a man in trouble. He is living with a man he dislikes and who patronizes him, in a Martello tower which was intended to be a British fortress against a French invasion during the Napoleonic era. Although it is early morning in late spring, a time of hope and promise, the artistic expectations aroused by the ending of Portrait are unfulfilled. By providing a traditional omniscient narrator whose voice is separate and distinct from Stephen’s, Joyce uses the opening of Ulysses to provide a critique of the lyricism and subjectivity of Portrait: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed” (U.2–3; I.1–2).