(2) The artistic features: Ulysses has become a prime example of modernism in literature. It is such an uncommon novel that there arises the question whether it can be termed as a "novel" all; for it seems to lack almost all the essential qualities of the novel in a traditional sense: there is virtually no story, no plot, almost no action, and little characterization in the usual sense. The events of the day seem to be trivial, insignificant, or even banal. But below the surface of the events, the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting moods and impulses in the characters' inner world are richly presented in an unprecedentedly frank and penetrating way.
(3) The social significance of the novel: In Ulysses, Joyce intends to present a microcosm of the whole human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains all the events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in the happenings of one day. With complete objectivity and minute details of man's everyday routines and his psychic processes, Joyce illustrates a symbolic picture of all human history, which is simultaneously tragic and comic, heroic and cowardly, magnificent and dreary. Like Eliot's masterpiece, The Waste Land, Joyce's Ulysses presents a realistic picture of the modern wasteland in which modern men are portrayed as vulgar and trivial creatures with splitting personalities, disillusioned ideals, sordid minds and broken families, who are searching in vain for harmonious human relationships and spiritual sustenance in a decaying world.

4. The characteristics of Finnegans Wake: Joyce spent 17 years working on his last important book, Finnegans Wake (1939). In this encyclopedic work, Joyce ambitiously attempted to pack the whole history of mankind into one night's dream. In the dream experience, there is no self-conscious logic, no orderly associations, no established values, no limits of time or space; all the past, present and future are mingled and float freely in the mind. Thus, Finnegans Wake is regarded as the most original experiment ever made in the novel form, and also the most difficult book to read.

5. The literary characteristics of Joyce's writing:
James Joyce is one of the most prominent literary figures of the first half of the 20th century.
(1) Joyce is regarded as the most prominent stream-of-consciousness novelist, concentrating on revealing in his novels the psychic being of the characters. In Joyce's opinion, the artist, who wants to reach the highest stage and to gain the insights necessary for the creation of dramatic art, should rise to the position of a god-like objectivity; he should have the complete conscious control over the creative process and depersonalize his own emotion in the artistic creation. He should appear as an omniscient author and present unspoken materials directly from the psyche of the characters, or make the characters tell their own inner thoughts in monologues.
(2) Another remarkable feature of Joyce's writings is his style. His own style is a straightforward one, lucid, logical and leisurely; subtlety, economy and exactness are his standards. But when he tries to render the so-called stream of consciousness, the style changes: incomplete, rapid, broken wording and fragmentary sentences are the typical features, which reflect the shifting, flirting, disorderly flow of thoughts in the major characters' mind. To create his modern Odyssey -Ulysses, Joyce adopts a kind of mock-heroic style. The essence of the mock-heroic lies in the application of apparently inappropriate styles. He achieves this mainly by elaborating his style into parody, pastiche, symbolic fantasy, and narration by question and answer from an omniscient narrator.
Many critics think that Joyce is a great master of innovation. His radical experimentation ranges from "stream of consciousness" to his fantastic engagements with rhetoric, sentimental romance, historical stylistics, counterpoint and expressionist drama. His mastery of the English language and style is always highly praised.

三.应用：Selected Reading:
"Araby" from Dubliners
The theme of "Araby": It is the third of the fifteen stories in Dubliners. This tale of the frustrated quest for beauty in the midst of drabness is both meticulously realistic in its handling of details of Dublin life and the Dublin scene and highly symbolic in that almost every image and incident suggests some particular aspect of the theme. Joyce was drawing on his own childhood recollections, and the uncle in the story is a reminiscence of Joyce's father. But in all the stories in Dubliners dealing with childhood, the child lives not with his parents but with an uncle and aunt - a symbol of that isolation and lack of proper relation between "consubstantial" (" in the flesh") parents and children which is a major theme in Joyce's work.