In response to a suggestion that I summarize the Nausicaa selection from Ulysses toward my prior article (MAThesis) on the subject, I would like to make the following suggestions:
1. This is a very popular section of Ulysses and there are many essays and summaries on it. Visit through your search engines to gather other points of view on this masterpiece, just as you do when researching other topics for your literature courses.
2. Hilite the selection, copy and paste it into your Word program, then you can format it for yourself. Some people like it big, some small. Break it down into your own sections for analysis. In short, write your own summaries and then compare them to the others you find in your books or on the internet.
3. It is one thing to be aware of the fact that Joyce is using popular romance literature of the period to convey the adolescent mind of Gerty MacDowell and another to realize that Joyce's writing has to be read carefully and slowly for comprehension, unlike the romance novels. It's like reading Shakespeare or the Bible. Not everyone will agree with me on this point.
For example. When I met my wife of 47 years I told her I had written my MA thesis on the Nausicaa Episode in James Joyce's Ulysses. She told me that she had studied Ulysses with an eminent literary critic at Temple University, Elizabeth Schneider, who had maintained that Joyce wrote a cruel leg pull (forgive the pun) in creating this episode. That he had merely used this section as a cruel parody of a young girl's fantasy. My wife, Vita, disagreed and expressed her view that Joyce was actually showing great feeling and compassion for both his characters, Gerty and Bloom.
When Vita told me this story, I asked her to marry me since I could not possibly let a women who agreed with my thesis go.
Jordan Richman
Odysseus Meets Nausicaa
Odysseus Meets Nausicaa, Pieter Lastman (1619), In Munich Old master Gallery
