Narrator Controversy of “Ulysses” by James Joyce: Literary critics, puzzled by complicated narration, do not know if it is manifestation of multiple personality.

The narration of Ulysses is puzzling and complicated:

“Many critics have many different views on the narrator within Ulysses. Some believe that the work has a traditional narrator…However, some argue that there is no narrator while others argue that there is a consistent form of narration although not necessarily in the third person…Some believe that individual characters take on the narration while others claim that Joyce is the only voice in the work…” (1).

“Episodes One, Two, Four–Twelve, Sixteen, and Seventeen feature anonymous narrators. Episode Three features Stephen’s thoughts. Episode Thirteen features an amalgamation of anonymous narrator, Gerty MacDowell, and Bloom. Episode Fourteen features a variety of narrators, meant to be representative of the prose styles of historical English authors. Episode Fifteen has no narrator. Molly Bloom is the first-person narrator of Episode Eighteen” (2).

Why didn’t Joyce clearly state his intention and rationale for such puzzling and complicated narration? Was he intentionally trying to create interpretative controversy in order to stimulate and perpetuate interest by the academy? Or was the nature of his narration simply the way the novel came to him?

That which literary criticism has assumed to be the result of a purposeful attempt to be original and experimental is often a manifestation of the writer’s multiple personality. Search “pirandello,” “woolf’s waves,” and “experimental.”

The narration of Ulysses may be an example of narrative multiple personality. That is my hypothesis; opinion, pending.

1. Wikiversity. Narrator of Ulysses. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Lectures/Literary_criticism/James_Joyce/Narrator_of_Ulysses

2. Sparknotes. Ulysses by James Joyce: Key Facts. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/facts.html