The Variations Of An Old Rhythm In The Modern World

Ulysses, the magnum opus of the Irish writer James Joyce, which was published in 1922, is one of the most significant works in the European and American novelistic history of the 20th century. The characters and story of Ulysses is based on the work of ancient Greece Odyssey's, but Ulysses uses the modern artistic forms and writing skills in the 20th century to demonstrate the evolvement of the character from an epic hero to a modern anti-hero. It develops Homer's traditional picaresque model of heroes into the"mental picaresque"of urban fla n?eur. Homer's epic is an important origin for Greek literature and even the western literature. Ulysses is a parody and variation of Odyssey. It profoundly reflects the changes of spirit from ancient times to modern times and also inherits and develops the western humanism, which has existed since ancient Greece. In a word, Ulysses is a glory milestone in modernist literature, and it is also valuable and significant in the history of western literature.This dissertation consists of five parts, which are composed of introduction, commentary and conclusion. The commentary part has three chapters:The Introduction summarizes the whole content of this dissertation and gives a full picture of the current researches on James Joyce and Ulysses at home and abroad and also gives a brief introduction of this dissertation's research angle and features and illustrates this dissertation's contributions and meanings in terms of academic studies.Chapter One, starting from the dimension of the creation of literature images, analyses the relations of"hero","son"and"wife"which corresponds in Ulysses and Odyssey and the brand new variation of characters in Ulysses, in order to prove the multifold features of the anti-hero and its meanings in modern times. Chapter Two dissertates on the development and features of"picaresque model"in terms of the dimension of literature model literature motif to reveal the nature of physical picaresque and mental picaresque, by dissecting Odyssey's"returning to homeland"in Odyssey and the journey of Bloom in Dublin, and also to discuss the modern aesthetics contained in the"idling"in Dublin of Bloom in Ulysses.Chapter Three dissertates the ups and downs of the powers between human and gods in the dimension of intertextuality and the rise of consciousness of human as a subject and its expression in the western literature. The writer also further explored and discussed people's living conditions in the modern western world in the 20th century, to prove that the humanism in Ulysses values modern freedom.Conclusion. The writer reaches a conclusion from the above three dimensions that Ulysses carries the mental connotation of the modern western community. It is the variation of ancient Greek humanism in the 20th century. As the echo of Homer's times, Ulysses has a profound significance in the history of western literature.