Life in a nutshell

Is history cyclical or progressive? Joyce, following Vico, saw it as rather cyclical, identifying recurring patterns in human history. History is a series of concentric circles, like the rings of a tree. Any one of these circles can be taken as the starting point, as the centre around which the circles are organised. This is just what happens in Ulysses, where one day, 16 June 1904, is taken as the centre. The closer circles around it most resemble the events being dramatised, while the more distant ones provide less important parallels. Thus we have a novel which is spatially and temporarily ambitious, ranging far through human experience, while at the same time focussing on the most pedestrian details of life in Dublin on one day. (Schwarz, Daniel R.: James Joyce: The Dead. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994: 14)