The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses by Patrick Hastings

Author:Patrick Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14 “OXEN OF THE SUN” GUIDE

The “Oxen of the Sun” episode takes place between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. at the Holles Street Maternity Hospital, where Stephen is drinking with three medical students (Dixon, Lynch, and Madden) and a few other miscellaneous Dubliners (Lenehan, Punch Costello, and Crotthers). Mr. Bloom will soon join this group, having taken a tram from Sandymount to Merrion Square in order to check on Mrs. Purefoy, who has been in labor at the hospital for three days.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew land on the island of Thrinacia, home of the sun god’s immortal sheep and longhorn cattle. Both Circe and Tiresias have warned Odysseus to avoid this island entirely; at the very least, they mustn’t harm Helios’s oxen — sacred symbols of fertility — lest the gods punish the offenders with annihilation. After making his crew swear that they will leave the cattle alone, Odysseus hikes inland, prays to the gods for help getting home, and falls asleep. Meanwhile, his irresponsible men feast on the oxen of the sun. Odysseus returns and is dismayed. As the ships leave the island, Zeus strikes them with a devastating lightning storm, killing everyone except Odysseus, the only member of the crew innocent of violating sacred fertility.

In “Oxen of the Sun,” Joyce uses a series of thirty-two parodies to represent the “embryonic development” he identified in the schema as his technique for this episode. These parodies chart the growth of literary style from preliterate pagan incantations into Middle English, followed by the Latinate styles of Milton, imitations of satirists such as Swift, and eventually up to nineteenth-century novelists such as Dickens. This episode, then, is the ultimate authorial powerflex: Joyce continues the plot of his own story while demonstrating mastery of every style of writing that led to the birth of Ulysses. Exhibiting Joyce’s unparalleled literary dexterity and depth of knowledge, this episode is an impressive execution of an audacious idea; Joyce estimated that he spent one thousand hours writing it (Letters 141). Yet none of that makes it particularly fun to read.

The Holles Street Maternity Hospital

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