Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

96 Grainne O’Hara Belluomo
of subversive humor also provided a well-spring of material for his own epic,
Ulysses. Joyce’s ability to twist Virgilian references into rather sophomoric
(albeit quite opaque) jokes is impressive. More intriguing however is Joyce’s
reinterpretation of Virgil’s Cacus in the form of Ulysses’ primary brute, the
Citizen. In Joyce’s “Cyclops” chapter, the Citizen appears “seated on a large
boulder at the foot of a round tower. . . broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed
frankeyed. . .shaggybearded. . .exploded volcano, the darling of all countries
and the idol of his own” (Joyce, 1999: 243, 258). The notion of the Citizen
as a volcano is a reference to Cacus’s father, Vulcan, as well as to his “vomiting
black flames from his mouth” (Aen. VIII.199). Joyce’s Citizen is also somewhat
more, or less than human, disproportionately loud, large and hairy. In Ulysses,
however, instead of enacting his will on a terrified town, the Citizen is reduced
to mistreating his dog and goading the seemingly equally defenseless Leopold
Bloom. The Citizen, is, in a sense, completely farcical, robbed of all ability to do
any real harm.
It makes sense then that Joyce pays his own brand of homage to Virgil’s
brief broad comedy. Virgil’s comedic reasoning prefigures the modern-day
Aeneases of contemporary literature. In Ulysses, Joyce builds upon the veiled
logic that Virgil’s farcical undertones create and takes that logic to its natural
conclusion. In Joyce’s vision, all of life is a farce, and the ones who make it
through are the Leopold Blooms, the sometimes petty, sometimes noble,
occasionally ridiculous, thoroughly human heroes.
References
Joyce, James. 1962. Finnegan’s Wake. New York, NY: Viking Press.
Joyce, James. 1999. Ulysses. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Plautus. 1913. Aulularia. E.G. Thomas, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Plautus. 1891. Rudens. Edward A. Sonnenschein, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schork, R.J. 1997. Latin and Roman Culture in James Joyce. Gainesville, FL: University
Press of Florida.
Sophocles. 1919. Ichneutae. Trans. Richard Johnson Walker. London: Burns and Oates
LTD.
Virgil. 1918. The Aeneid. Trans. H. Rushton Faiclough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.