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The in the works of James Joyce From: Critical Companion to James Joyce: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion.

This is the title of an epic poem in 24 parts, or books, traditionally attributed to the poet . (With its companion piece, The , it forms the prototype for the epic genre in Western literature.) records the 10 years of wandering endured by the Greek hero after the fall of Troy. Odysseus struggles to overcome the obstacles put in his way by the god , father of , who has been blinded by Odysseus (see book 9), and return to his family and home in .

The poem begins with Odysseus trapped on the island of the nymph , who has fallen in love with him and forced him to remain with her against his will. Odysseus is able to leave only after the goddess takes pity on him and intercedes for him with the god . At the same time, on Ithaca a number of suitors, assuming that Odysseus is dead, have appeared to seek the hand of his wife, . The suitors' despoiling presence has become a threat to , the son of Odysseus, who has grown to young manhood in the 20 years that his father has been gone, and who now sets out in search of news of him.

After consulting and , his father's former comrades at Troy, Telemachus returns to Ithaca. Meanwhile, Odysseus has been shipwrecked and cast ashore on the beach in Phaeacia. There Nausikaa, the king's daughter, finds him. Odysseus is brought to the court of where he tells the king of his suffering in his encounters with the Lotus Eaters, whose soporific drugs threaten to enervate the crew; the , the one-eyed Polyphemus who seeks to imprison Odysseus and his crew and to devour them one at a time; the Lestrygonians, fierce cannibals; , the god of the winds who offers Odysseus assistance in returning to Ithaca; , the enchantress who briefly transforms Odysseus's crew into swine; the Sirens, seeking through their songs to lure sailors to steer their ships onto rocks to destroy them; Scylla and Charybdis, the six-headed monster and the gigantic whirlpool between which Odysseus must sail; and the Oxen of the Sun, the cattle beloved of the god that Odysseus's crew slay despite his admonitions. Alcinous sends Odysseus back to Ithaca, where disguised as a beggar he visits his faithful swineherd . He learns of the suitors who are vying for Penelope's attentions and despoiling his property, and with the help of Telemachus, to whom he has revealed himself, he returns home and kills them all. After assuring Penelope of his true identity by answering correctly her question about the construction of their bed, Odysseus is reunited with his wife. He then visits his father, , as the poem ends.

As the prototype of the epic form, The Odyssey offers a rough formal and contextual model for the structure that frames Joyce's . Although in composing his work Joyce made no effort to follow the narrative line of Homer's epic, he did use characters and scenes from the poem as the basis for significant portions of his novel. The most obvious associations are the parodic, mock-epical evocations of familiar material from Homer's poem. For a detailed breakdown of Joyce's Homeric references, see the Ulysses schema reprinted in the appendix on page 392.

Citation Information Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format): Fargnoli, A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie. "The Odyssey in the works of James Joyce." Critical Companion to James Joyce: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com.proxy1.athensams.net/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=CCJJ0523& SingleRecord=True (accessed August 28, 2012).

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