‘Ulysses’ in adaptation : an analysis of two film adaptations and a series of illustrations

Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of two film adaptations of Ulysses by directors Joseph Strick and Sean Walsh, and of a series of eight illustrations (7 etchings and a digital print) produced by Richard Hamilton, in terms of the directors’ and of the artist’s reworking of the novel in their respective medium. The first chapter is an in-depth review of literary devices, such as stream-of consciousness and interior monologue, adopted by Joyce in his novel Ulysses. The second chapter is dedicated to film analysis. It includes a general note on film adaptation that will also provide a theoretical framework for the films that will be analysed. This chapter aims to identify how directors Strick and Walsh seek to re-create, within the language of cinema, the stylistic peculiarities and thematic preoccupations in Ulysses. The scope is to verify if they succeed in making the film viewers perceive the films in a manner that parallels the literariness of the original experience. For this reason, this analysis arises out of some of the stylistic features adopted by Joyce, identified in the first chapter as elements that construct his poetics. The third chapter explores how artist Richard Hamilton seeks to recreate and represent the world of Ulysses in his series of illustrations, and how each illustration parallels the specific chapter on which it is based. In the conclusion, some general considerations are made. The overall aim of this dissertation is to assess if the films and illustrations analysed succeed in the conversion of literary language into a different medium and if in the process they manage to produce a creative adaptation that contributes to give an ‘afterlife’ to the original text by expanding the reading from a word-based language to an image-based language.