In Virginia Woolf's opinion traditional novel was not able to convey what is life because it neglected impressions. She thought life is a luminous halo. It follows that she adopted new techniques like the interior monologue, moments of being, metaphorical use of language reminding poetry, disregarding cronological time arranging. She preferred to follow the flashes of conscious going forward and backward in simultaneous concept of time (a typical Modernist conception of time) where the present includes past memories and future expectations. Besides Virginia Woolf, Joyce is considered the greatest novelist of the western world. He was interested in conveying reality as it really is and he adopted myth as the principal structure of his novel. Indeeed the myths of Ulysses, Odissey provides the content to give unity and organisation to his masterpiece. What 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 no connectors, no paraghraps. According to the workings of stream of consciousness, conscious flows apparently in a circular way. It follows that the positions of the reader becomes utmost importance: he is asked a lot.

He also reviewed the plot to the minimum. What is mainly interesting in it is the inner life of his characters.

The Ulysses was written in 1922. It is about the life of threee characters: Leopold Bloom, his wife Penelope and Stephen Dedalus, a young man he meets in one of Dublin pubs. It is about a single day in Dublin, in June in 1904. The protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is an arrogant poverty striken artist and intellectual in spiritual exile from his country and family. He is seeking a father while Leopold Bloom is a Jewes advertising-spaces sales man. By virtue of being a Jew, also in exile, he is seeking a sign. They represent, in essence, Telemachus and Odisseus.
James Joyce projects in his characters people of his time. Ulysses is looking for himself: it is referred to man's sourcing of the sense of life. The journey is the metaphore for man's journey in his inner reality. He tests himself in front of a problem and analysis his reactions.
Epic poem celebrates hero's features. Hero dies in order to adhere to values of his time. But there are few heroes in the world and Joyce says man is not a hero. There is a distance between what man wants to be and what he is. Instead of telling the adventures of the soul, he wants to tell life adventures. There is a difference between what past heroes did and what common men do now.
The mythical past is the point of reference because of its fertility. Joyce says that epic poem is linked with celebration: Joyce wants to product a novel that conveys something to his contemporaries (myth is carried nowadays). So he creates Leopold Bloom (Bloom: fiorire), who has got an useless work in advertising and he is the opposite of the great hero, Ulysses.
Leopold is looking for a son (another reference to past fertility and present sterility). So Joyce creates Stephen, who is James Joyce's projection. He has not a father: from S. Freud thought he has not a superego who gives him points of reference.
Penelope is totally different from Odissey Penelope: she is here the symbol of the woman. She is sensual and she wants to be satisfied.
Homer's Odissey is the story of a quest, Joyce's Ulysses is a quest as his central theme for the day's progress. So it represents a journey.