James Joyce: A Portrait and Ulysses

Choose the correct alternative to complete the sentences.

1. The title of the novel suggests a ________ between the writer's and the painter's work.
2. The ________ article in the title is important because it indicates that this novel is only one of the possible interpretations of a subject.
3. The subject of the novel is the protagonist's ________ and the development of his personality in his childhood and youth.
4. Joyce ________ wrote outside the framework of his Irish environment.
5. This novel ________ autobiographical, political, religious and mythical elements.

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.
The coals were reddening.
Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.
– Mkgnao!
– O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.
The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.
Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.
– Milk for the pussens, he said.
– Mrkgnao! the cat cried.
They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.

Choose the correct alternative to complete the sentences.
1. In this episode the external level of narration is ________.
2. In the external level of narration Joyce uses a ________person narrator.
3. In the external level of narration the sentences have subjects, verbs and complements in ________ order.
4. The second level of narration takes place within the author's/character's consciousness.
5. In the second level of narration there are ________ statements with elision of subjects, auxiliary verbs and reversal of the standard order of words.
6. The text also presents a continuation of Mr Bloom's memory of the ________.

Read the following sentences and say whether they are true or false.

Choose the correct alternatives to complete the sentence.

Stephen Dedalus

Match the characters and places with the transformations they bring about in Stephen's life.

1. Stephen turns from fanatical religiousness to devotion to art and beauty: ________
2. Stephen turns from being shy and withdrawn to smart and outgoing: ________
3. Stephen turns from an unrepentant sinner to a devout Catholic: ________
4. Stephen becomes a fully formed artist: ________
5. Stephen turns from innocence to corruption: ________

Read the text below and find the five mistakes in it.

The novel begins with a third-person narrator and ends with a first-person one. The first narrator gives way to Joyce, who tells his own experiences and thoughts through free direct speech. In particular, this technique is used in Chapter I, where there is a sudden shift from external description and action into Stephen's thoughts about his future as an actor. In this way the author can keep some distance from the main character and at the same time hide his inner thoughts. All the characters and the events of the novel, which are based on real correlatives, are filtered through Stephen's consciousness. The hero is not identical to Joyce but despises many of his experiences. Joyce experiments with different points of view and the language he employs develops from that of a small child to the more sophisticated one of a university student.

Complete the sentences with the correct information.

1. In this scene Stephen expresses his wishes for the ________.
2. He decides to wander along the ________, climbs down a sandy slope, and watches drifts of seaweed, the 'water of the rivulet' and the clouds.
3. He suddenly realises his ________ is over.
4. His loneliness is in antithesis with the multitude of happy ________ in front of him.
5. He sees a lonely, still girl 'before him in midstream', who is compared to a ________.
6. Stephen and the girl become aware of each other's ________, and he is ecstatic and excited at the sight of her.

Choose the correct alternative to complete the sentences.

1. Joyce was able to write the novel Ulysses thanks to several anonymous ________.
2. Ulysses began to appear in serial form in ________ in 1918, but was suspended in 1920 on the charge of obscenity.
3. The American-born bookseller Sylvia Beach, based in ________, agreed to publish Ulysses in 1922.
4. A limited edition of 1,000 copies was followed by an ________ edition of 2,000 copies, printed in Paris.
5. The first unlimited edition followed in 1924, again in Paris, but there was no ________ edition until 1934, and no British edition until 1937.
6. Pound acclaimed the novel and T.S. Eliot declared that Ulysses 'was the most ________ expression which the modern age has found'.
7. ________ considered it a work of a genius.

Tick the words or phrases related to Bloomsday.

Read the following sentences and say whether they are true or false.