Epic and the Nation in Virgil's "Aeneid" and Joyce's "Ulysses".

It is the contention of this dissertation that Joyce's Ulysses uses intertextuality with Virgil's Aeneid at politically charged moments in the novel in order to construct a hybridized and intercultural Irish identity. Ulysses is able to do this because the Aeneid constructs an ancient collective identity that prefigures certain features of modern nationalism. While nationalism is an invention of the modern world, the collective political identity of the Aeneid relies on cultural roots tied to a specifically bounded territory, namely the Italian peninsula. The Aeneid constructs a collective identity using strategies, including especially the "reassurance of fratricide," analogous to ideological mechanisms of modern nationalisms.