The Cast of Characters

Contemporaries in imagination as in fact, James Joyce and Sigmund Freud pondered the complexities and depths of human consciousness and found distinct ways to represent itthe one as a great novelist, the other as the first psychoanalyst. In this book, Paul Schwaber, both a professor of literature and a psychoanalyst, brings a clinicians attentiveness and a scholar-critics literary commitment to the study of characterization in Ulysses. Alert to form, style, and innovation, and respecting continuities and uniquenesses of character, he offers discerning explanations of why Leopold Bloom, who knows he isnt Jewish, clearly feels Jewish to himself and others; how Stephen Dedalus intricate theory of Shakespeare reveals core aspects of his own inner struggles; and why Molly Blooms adulterous aftermath registers with her, at the end of the day, as sleeplessness. Schwaber also offers intriguing commentary on the novels narrator. Not imposing formulations but subtly drawing them from the text, Schwaber reads openlyas an analyst listensand illuminates the extraordinary psychological mimesis of Ulysses. He invites his readers to appreciate the brilliance and fun of Joyces book, and in so doing he brings psychoanalysis as a mode of inquiry to the test of great literature. Published in assistance with the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund