It is the contention of this dissertation that Joyce’s Ulysses uses intertextuality with Virgil’s Aeneid at politically charged moments in the novel in order to construct a hybridized and intercultural Irish identity. Ulysses is able to do this because the Aeneid constructs an ancient collective identity that prefigures certain features of modern nationalism. While nationalism is an invention of the modern world, the collective political identity of the Aeneid relies on cultural roots tied to a specifically bounded territory, namely the Italian peninsula. The Aeneid constructs a collective identity using strategies, including especially the “reassurance of fratricide,” analogous to ideological mechanisms of modern nationalisms.

The first two chapters of this dissertation investigate the influence of the Aeneid on Ulysses, while the last two chapters reverse the direction and investigate the influence of Ulysses on the Aeneid. Chapter one argues that the character of the citizen in Joyce’s “Cyclops” is modeled on the monster Cacus and the hero Hercules of Aeneid 8. Chapter two argues that Bloom’s experiences in Joyce’s “Circe” are modeled on Aeneas’ journey through the underworld in Aeneid 6, and especially that the appearance of Bloom’s dead son Rudy alludes to the appearance of the ghost of Augustus’ heir Marcellus. Both “Cyclops” and “Circe” are intensely political episodes, and by drawing on Virgil’s ancient Roman epic, Ulysses constructs an Irish national identity not on a purely Irish past, but on the basis of a broader, transnational tradition. Chapter three argues that the Aeneid projects the historically recent unification of Italy onto the ancient past by presenting Aeneas’ war in Italy as a civil war. By emphasizing Aeneas’ ties with Italy, the poem naturalizes the cultural unity of Italy and builds a collective Italian identity on the foundation of the tragedy of fratricide. Chapter four argues that Aeneid 6 forms links between patrilineal, political, narrative, and semantic discontinuities, illustrating the fragmentation that collective Italian identity seeks to overcome. Analyzing the intertextual relations between Virgil’s Aeneid and Joyce’s Ulysses, this dissertation sheds new light on the literary construction of political identity in both texts.