The main aim of Modernism was to put the subjectivity at the center of investigation. Fiction writers focus their attention in the world of consciousness and they no longer believe traditional novel could return a faithful idea of life to the reader.

Virginia Woolf invites the reader to look within and at life. In her opinion traditional novel could not convey what life is like because it neglected the way in which impressions come into mind in the shape of "a innumerable shower of atoms". It follows that she adopts new techniques like interior monologue, shift of point of view, moment of being, metaphorical use of the language remanding poetry, disregarding chronological time arrangement of events (she preferred to follow the flashes of consciousness going forward or backward), simultaneous concept of time where the present includes past memories and future expectations. Besides Virginia Woolf, James Joyce is considered the greatest novelist of the western world in history, he took experimentation to the maximum. He was interested in conveying reality as it really is and he adopted myth as the structuring principle of his novel, indeed the myth if Ulysse's Odyssey provides the content to give unity and organization to his masterpiece. What James Joyce was trying to do was to render the reality of his time in the most realistic way. That is why he adopted the total stream of consciousness technique. His prose is very complex, there are not connectors, no punctuation, no paragraphs. According to the workings of the stream of consciousness, conscience flows apparently in circular way. It follows that the position of the reader becomes utmost important: indeed he had to provide the logical and semantic connection to the flow of words. He also reduces the plot to the minimal in that what was mainly interested in was the inner life of his characters. Ulysses was written in 1922. Ulysses is about the life of three characters: Leopold Bloom, his wife Penelope and Stephen Dedalus, a young man he meets in one of Dublin's pubs,

Ulysses is about a single day in Dublin in June 1904. the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, an arrogant artist and intellectual in spiritual exile from his country and family. He is seeking a father while Leopold Bloom is a Jew adverting-space salesman. By virtue of being Jew also in exile he is seeking a son. They represent, in essence Telemachus and Odysseus.

But Joyce cannot accept that everybody is hero, because only few people can be that. So his literature celebrates anti-heroes. The surname Bloom that mean the blooming of flower is contradiction and it recalls the fertility of past in opposition to the present.

 Ulysses present the story in one day. Every chapter corresponds to one myth, to one hour and to one part of body. He uses Ulysses as a structural element of his work.