Text 1: Critic Park argues that James Joyce's Ulysses is a celebration of the ordinary. By devoting hundreds of pages to a single day of an ordinary Dubliner's life — meals, errands, conversations — Joyce insists that the everyday deserves the same epic attention once reserved for kings and warriors.
Text 2: Critic Singh accepts that Ulysses dignifies the ordinary but argues that the novel's mythic apparatus complicates the celebration. Each chapter mirrors an episode of Homer's Odyssey; Leopold Bloom is not merely a man but a modern Odysseus. The novel, Singh contends, elevates the ordinary precisely by measuring it against the heroic — a tension Park's "celebration" reading underplays.
Based on the texts, how would Singh (Text 2) most likely respond to Park's reading?
- A
She would reject the idea that Joyce dignifies the ordinary.
- B
She would deny that Ulysses is set in Dublin.
- C
She would agree that Ulysses ignores the heroic tradition.
- Dcheck_circle
She would accept Park's central claim while arguing that the heroic frame complicates a simple celebration.
Explanation
Singh accepts the dignification of the ordinary but adds the heroic frame as a complicating tension. C captures her partial agreement. A, B, and D contradict her.