Hellenise it

When Mulligan says in Telemachus that he and Stephen working together "might do something for the island. Hellenise it," he is voicing a tenet of late Victorian counterculture advanced by the English poet and man of letters Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). Arnold's theory informs statements elsewhere in Ulysses about Greekness and Jewishness, as well as the novel's underlying affirmation of human-centered values against religious absolutism.

John Hunt 2017


Caricature of Matthew Arnold by Jacques Joseph (James) Tissot, from the 11 November 1871 issue of Vanity Fair. Source: Wikimedia Commons.


Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863 oil on canvas painting held in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Source: Wikimedia Commons.


Formal photographic portrait of Arnold by Elliott & Fry ca. 1883, held in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Source: Wikimedia Commons.