Abstract
Objective: As a background to the centenary of Bloomsday, to explore the circumstances in which James Joyce wrote Ulysses, noting the autobiographical elements and unique style, including the stream-of-consciousness technique that depicted the inner life of the characters. Selected quotations are used to illustrate these points. Joyce wanted to show that the epic and the heroic is in our lives every day.
Conclusions: Ulysses defined the literary consciousness of the 20th century. By basing the novel about a day in the life of three ordinary characters on Homer's epic account of an 18 year voyage, Joyce re-established the link between 20th century consciousness and classical times.