SOURCE: "Joyce's Bifocal Lens: Politics in Ireland," in the Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XXII, No. 2, Winter, 1981, pp. 147-62.

In the following essay, Zehr contends that the "Cyclops " chapter of James Joyce 's Ulysses "dramatizes . . . both forty years of Irish history and the complexity of Joyce's political attitudes and responses to the Irish political situation. "

One of our most persistent critical images of James Joyce has been that of the politically uninvolved artist—the detached writer sitting above the arena of human affairs paring his fingernails. Although we do associate with Joyce an extensive cultural consciousness of Ireland, we have generally understood that consciousness as free from political partisanship. The "Cyclops" chapter of Ulysses—which pits, in a serio-comic style, the humanist Bloom against the bigoted nationalist figure of the Citizen—is usually read as confirming this political detachment; while the chapter clearly reflects Joyce's pervasive knowledge of Ireland's cultural...