ABSTRACT
This movement considers the literary uses of music in Joyce's Ulysses in relation to what T. S. Eliot called Joyce's “mythic method.” It treats Homer's Odyssey as counterpoint, introducing the Homeric correspondences as they relate to music. It demonstrates how Joyce responds to (and challenges) Wagner's concept of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (often translated as ‘total artwork’) and how he develops the leitmotif with the aim of clarifying the philosophical, as well as the pragmatic and aesthetic, relevance of this technique in Ulysses. It continues to juxtapose Nietzsche's Apollo/Dionysus dichotomy with Joyce's narrative depiction of music and myth and his protagonists in Ulysses.
