Notes on Chapter 10, "Wandering Rocks"

Time:  3 p.m.

Technic:  "Labyrinth"

Homeric Parallel:  hardly any.  The wandering rocks were a 
hazardous area of the sea that Odysseus was warned by Circe to 
avoid. 

Central episode of the book in the sense that it pulls together 
most of the characters.  Adds little new information, merely 
touching base with what we already know. 

Two structural aspects:  vignettes, vice-regal cavalcade from 
palace to Mirus bazaar.  The reactions of the various characters 
to the passing British nobility link them within a like socio-political context as it shows people's individual 
attitudes about that context. 

Also a pacing device:  after the intense intellectualism of 
"Scylla and Charybdis" and prior to the intense and somewhat 
opaque playfulness of "Sirens," and the claustrophic 
interiority of both, the chapter provides relief and 
time for reflection on the big picture.

What appears to be a "naturalistic" chapter thus assumes a non-
naturalistic, purely narrative role pacing, refocusing).  The 
end of "Nausicaa" is similar in function.

Passages of interest:

     180ff (Father Conmee redux)
     188 (16 June 1904)
     193-194 (Bloom buys a Sacher-Masoch book)
     198 (style even here is slightly unstable)
     200 (Stephen's guilt re: family)
     204-205 (Mulligan and Haines talk about Stephen)
     207-209 (Vice-regal cavalcade -- nuanced style)