| Description |
Although Ulysses is a complex work, it is possible to discover aspects of it by close reading and analyzing specific aspects of particular episodes. I use a variety of critics of Ulysses to discover aspects of Shakespeare's play Hamlet in the Scylla and Charybdis episode, the ninth episode of Ulysses. I discuss the importance of specific allusions and parallels between characters, notably with Stephen Dedalus, Hamlet, Leopold Bloom, and Shakespeare. I note the rhetorical aspects of Ulysses, and how they pertain to Shakespeare's play. Through deconstructing the context and the setting of both Ulysses and Hamlet, I bring forth salient aspects of each work. I discuss and analyze the influences that both Shakespeare and Joyce had while composing their respective works, including the questions that pervaded the mindset of Elizabethan England, and the opinions of Shakespearean critics that were popular when Joyce was writing Ulysses. The aim of my thesis is both interpretive and scholarly, as I seek to unravel the threads of Hamlet in Ulysses, and discover elements of James Joyce in the process. |
