The word myth comes from the Greek mythos and means tale, story, fabricated narrative, but it does not have one once-and-for-all established meaning. According to Mazzarella (1981) , myth offers the possibility of accessing the archetypes that reveal the universal and timeless aspects of human qualities and the human condition. The archetype enables recognition but can also function emotionally, mediating between inner and outer reality. Mazzarella (1981) cites Richard Chase’s definition of myth, which can be said to fit not only Strändernas svall but also Ulysses:

“Myth is an esthetic device for bringing the imaginary but powerful world of preternatural forces onto a manageable collaboration with the objective (i.e., experienced) facts of life in such a way as to excite a sense of reality amenable to both the unconscious passions and the conscious mind.”

The term “the mythical method” was coined by T.S. Eliot in the text Ulysses, Order and Myth,” ( Eliot, 1923 ), where he described it:

“It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. …”.

Eliot further claims that Joyce used the mythical method instead of a narrative method because this new way of writing would offer a more structured system:

“In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him. They will not be imitators, any more than a scientist who uses the discoveries of Einstein in pursuing his own independent, further investigations.”

It is interesting to note that both Eliot (Eliot, 1922) and Ezra Pound (Pound, 1925) , who helped Joyce with the revision of Ulysses, used the mythical method.

A later description of what is encompassed by the mythical method has been given by James A. Nohrnberg ( Nohrnberg, 2011 ):

“Eliot’s so-called ‘mythical method’ is a publishing author’s practice of taking an ancient or received myth, legend, or traditional, archetypal, or historical story—from the point of view of literary realism a tall tale or fantastic legend—as the skeleton or organizing principle or scaffold or template or infrastructure or pentimento for a narrative or plot that is both ostensibly self-standing and in some sense ‘modern,’ or more contemporary, and yet can be mapped onto a kind of archaeological other original.”

Mazzarella (1981) in her dissertation provided a background presentation of Johnson’s use of his “mythical method” as a solution to the problem of narration in Strändernas svall, and then used this background for the analysis and interpretation of the novel. She emphasizes that

“In the study of myths one distinguishes between the mythical material that is bound to a given time and culture, and the motifs in myth that are timeless and universal and extend beyond cultures.”

An example of Joyce’s application of the mythical method in Ulysses, can be found in the episode where Stephen Dedalus is debating Shakespeare in the National Library. Joyce gives the scene the Homeric title of Odysseus steering between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. The library debate becomes Stephen’s version of navigating between intellectual dangers and opposing critical positions. A line that shows this modern-mythic parallel is: “Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.”

Johnson overlays the classical myth of the Odyssey onto a modern situation (the anxiety of Europe after World War II). One passage that exemplifies this comes when Odysseus reflects on returning home after Troy: “Man sade sig: Det var fred, men fredens dagar fylldes av oro, av minnen som inte dog, av rykten om nya krig.”(“They said to themselves: There was peace, but the days of peace were filled with unrest, with memories that would not die, with rumors of new wars.”)

The “Calypso” episode is the second episode of the novel. It marks the first appearance of Leopold Bloom, one of its central protagonists, alongside Stephen Dedalus. It takes place around eight o’clock in the morning on 16 June 1904 at Bloom’s home at 7 Eccles Street in Dublin. The episode opens with Bloom engaged in the mundane routines of domestic life. He prepares breakfast for his wife, Molly Bloom, and goes out to buy a pork kidney from Dlugacz’s butcher shop. On his return, he cooks the kidney for himself, savoring its smell and taste. This quiet domestic scene stands in deliberate contrast to the heroic tone of the classical epic Odyssey. As Bloom brings Molly her breakfast in bed, their brief conversation reveals that she is expecting a visit later that day from Blazes Boylan, her lover. Bloom is aware of her impending infidelity but does not confront her; instead, he seems to suppress or sidestep his emotions, showing his tendency to internalize pain. Through Joyce’s use of interior monologue, the reader gains intimate access to Bloom’s wandering thoughts about food, animals, religion, sexuality, and everyday minutiae, which give depth to his character and sharply contrast with the distant, heroic image of Odysseus in the Odyssey.

The Homeric parallel that gives this episode its name links Molly to Calypso, the nymph who detains Odysseus on her island and delays his return home. Molly, in this symbolic framework, is the figure who keeps Bloom anchored to the domestic sphere, her sensual presence exerting a powerful pull on him. Yet just as Odysseus leaves Calypso’s island to resume his journey, Bloom too will step out from the confines of his household into the wider world of Dublin, beginning his own daylong wandering.

The “Calypso” episode thus introduces key themes that resonate throughout the novel. It juxtaposes the domestic and the epic, elevating everyday routines to the level of mythic significance. It also sets up the central tension of fidelity and infidelity, with Molly’s affair looming over Bloom’s thoughts. Moreover, it hints at Bloom’s sense of otherness—his Jewish heritage and outsider status in Irish Catholic society—while foregrounding Joyce’s distinctive use of interior monologue. This episode, though quiet and ordinary on the surface, lays the foundation for Bloom’s odyssey through the city and for the novel’s larger project of portraying the epic within the everyday.

The episode is presented in five different chapters (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9). Information is provided partly by an omniscient narrator (“the Reteller”), and partly by what Odysseus thinks (inner monologues/stream of consciousness).

The episode opens with a description of Odysseus’s heavy exploration of his mouth—missing teeth, various tastes, and memories. His physical appearance and his situation are described in detail—the injured hands, the broad shoulders—“the beard was yellow-red and unkempt after the last three days of lovemaking and drinking.” We are told that he is a captive (?) on an island or promontory and has been there for seven years. The image is conjured of a worn man of 40–45 years, alternating with information that he lives on a beautiful estate with a woman for whom he feels both disgust and desire. When she asks whether he longs for home, he does not want to answer. He calls upon Zeus: “You must help me out of this in the end! I cannot bear the passage of the years, Zeus!” He thinks back to his home island and family, and when he goes down to the shore to bathe, he hears the voices of men coming ashore. It is the Messenger, the Swift-Footed Hermes, the Unreliable One, who comes with orders from the gods that he must leave the island and Calypso. They walk in the dark to a secluded herdsman’s hut to talk. Odysseus avoids the Unreliable One’s questions about whether he has been bored, whether he has enjoyed himself, and whether “she” didn’t want to let him go. The Unreliable One explains that the gods have been aware of his situation and cautiously and diplomatically presents his errand, announcing that the divine council has decided that he cannot turn his back on his homeland but must return to Ithaca. He informs him of the situation on Ithaca: the suitors, his father, Telemachus, and Penelope. Odysseus defends his situation: “I never wanted to go to war,” and explains how he tried to escape conscription by feigning madness but was exposed by Agamemnon and Menelaus. The Messenger thinks: “It was a fine war, in any case,” heroes go down in history”. Odysseus objects: the slaves did not come home, and he accuses the gods: “it was you who started the war—the history books say nothing, only what the ruler commands.” Odysseus realizes that he is to go to war again but feels no joy in starting to prepare for departure. The Messenger delivers his message to Calypso (“a dark, soft type, between thirty-five and forty, beautiful… a consummate mistress”). “It is an order, my lady.” She tries to control herself—“he has had it so good here”—and protests against the gods—“you mighty ones, you envious ones.” But she accepts under protest—“we were very happy—he did not long to leave,” and promises to arrange transportation. The Messenger departs, and Odysseus experiences travel fever, excitement, hesitation, and fear. After the evening meal, they discuss the departure. Calypso analyzes Odysseus’s feelings—you want to go, but you are afraid that the world you return to is not the same as the one you left. With me, there is unchanging security—I can make you immortal. But she is under orders—“stay and I will be punished.” Odysseus emphasizes that he has always had it good with her: “I would like to be two: one half would stay here.” When Odysseus asks Calypso why she does not give up what she is seeking, she counters with: “What are you seeking yourself?” Odysseus answers “human peace” but does not really know what he wants. They quarrel—a human quarrel—reconciliation. Calypso tells her story of how, after cursing the gods, she was punished with eternal life and ended up on her island.

Calypso initiates the building of a raft and hires two carpenters to lead the work, in which Odysseus takes an active part. The raft is described expertly and in detail. Calypso equips him—water, food, clothes—and gives him a life belt of large cork pieces, which she asks him to throw back into the sea when he reaches land. On the last night they sleep together in the cave on the Green Island. Calypso mentions that he talked in his sleep, and when he asks what he said, she mentions the name Astyanax, which upsets him (memory flash: “they killed him”). Odysseus changes the subject and begins to recount some of his adventures under the name Ovtis—Nobody. He tells of Scylla and Charybdis, the stay with Circe, and the cattle of Helios. All his men die, but Ovtis—Nobody—survives. Odysseus ends the conversation: “I have had it good with you, Calypso.” He sails out—Calypso on the shore—and steers the raft toward Helios.

One may ask why Joyce and Johnson chose an ancient model and how they used the Odysseus myth. Regarding Joyce, opinions were divided among his contemporary critics. Litz (1972) summarized: “Whereas Eliot saw Ulysses as a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Pound viewed the novel’s schema as an ordering device not organically related to the narrative, a vestigial medievalism which has little to do with the work’s essential realism.”

Johnson’s intentions with Strändernas svall have been discussed. It has been claimed that “the sequence of events is the same in Strändernas svall as in the Odyssey ( Stenström, 1982 ) and that “in a certain sense it [Strändernas svall] stays closest to Homer, for what is depicted is the same sequence of events as the ancient epic recounts and the persons are the same as there” (Albert Wifstrand; quoted in Stenström, 1982 ). To this Eyvind Johnson replied: “Strändernas svall is not an attempt to rewrite the Odyssey, Homer’s immortal poem. The novel does not, as many believe, entirely follow the outer line of Homer’s epic, and even less its inner one. Some who have written about the novel have claimed that they have been able to follow Homer’s Odysseus step by step in my work. That is only what they believe, it is.” (Johnson quoted in Stenström, 1982 ). It is clear that Strändernas svall is not plagiarism but a reinterpretation of the events in the Odyssey. Johnson’s way of letting Odysseus recount well-known events from the Odyssey often yields new perspectives—one sees the events with new eyes.

In his schema with Telemachiad, Odyssey, and Nostos, Joyce placed the Calypso episode as no. 1 in the Odyssey section, i.e., after the first three episodes, thus following the sequence indicated in the Odyssey. As in the Odyssey, the Calypso episode is relatively brief but occupies a central position in the novel: Leopold Bloom (Odysseus) is introduced here for the first time. Johnson has a different order of episodes—Calypso is the first episode in the novel, and already here Odysseus is introduced. In Strändernas svall, the episode takes up a considerable part of the novel: it comprises about 160 pages (out of 600) in five chapters (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9). This may be explained by the detailed description of external details and inner monologues, but also by the way the novel is structured. In the Calypso episode, other events from the Odyssey are retold by Odysseus in conversations with Hermes (the account of his recruitment) and with Calypso (the accounts of Scylla and Charybdis, the stay with Circe, the cattle of Helios), which contribute to its scope. In Ulysses, each of these events receives its own episode.

Bloom is introduced as a man with a fondness for eating the offal of four-footed animals and birds. That he is Jewish does not emerge directly, but is hinted at by the name Leopold Bloom and by his inner monologue, where he mentions “the oldest people” and their fates. We get no clear idea of his outward appearance. Still, his behavior and relation to his surroundings suggest that he is a decent person, somewhat passive and resigned (aware of his wife Molly’s infidelity), and with a labile temperament. We are confronted with his daily routines—breakfast for himself and his wife—all given in careful detail. The realistically rendered quiet everyday life is, however, interspersed with elements which, in their intimacy and physiological naturalism, can seem almost shocking, e.g., the visit to the privy. What goes on within Bloom is revealed through inner monologues covering everything from speculations about the swaying haunches of the neighbor’s maid at Dlugacz’s to musings about gardening on the way to the privy. The alternation between narration via a third person and the stream of consciousness/inner monologue makes the text vivid. It is also a way to provide more or less continuous information about Bloom’s external and internal reality.

In Strändernas svall, Odysseus is described outwardly as a man badly used by war, 40 - 45 years old, with damaged teeth and hands, but otherwise unbroken physique—perhaps due to good recovery with Calypso during seven years of good drinking, eating, and lovemaking. In the Odyssey, Odysseus’s situation is described: “for down by the shore sat the high-hearted hero and wept as he was wont to do, and with gloomy sighs he tore his aching heart while he stared, tearful, out over the desolate sea.” This is not consistent with the depiction in Strändernas svall, where Odysseus seems to have settled in quite well. Odysseus’s inner thoughts, presented as inner monologues, do reveal his periods of homesickness and resignation, but also his ambivalence and fear of returning to what awaits—a changed world filled with new problems. The Messenger has informed him of what is going on in Ithaca. Odysseus is weary of war, and his deep dives into memories of the great war torment him. One thinks of a “traumatic stress syndrome.” He is tormented not only by his war memories (Astyanax—child murder; the use of slaves). He is reluctant to leave Calypso for an uncertain future, is war-weary and indecisive, and seems almost relieved that the gods have made the decision.

How, then, have Joyce and Johnson used the myth and the mythical method in their storytelling? Whether or not Joyce merely used the sequences of the Odyssey as a matrix to structure Bloom’s wanderings in Dublin, it is reasonable to seek parallels between the events in the Odyssey and in Ulysses. Direct parallels with the model are hard to discern. Reminders of antiquity are given when Molly wants the word “metempsychosis” explained. Bloom translates the word as transmigration of souls and explains: “They believed one could be transformed into an animal or a tree, for example. Into what they called nymphs, for instance.” Another reference to antiquity is the painting over the bed depicting a bathing nymph and Bloom’s reflection upon it: “Naked nymphs. Greece: and for that matter, all the people who lived then.” Allegorically, it is tempting to regard Molly as Calypso. She holds Bloom captive in a marriage he finds hard to break away from, as from the home and its ingrained routines. When Bloom “breaks away,” it is only for a day’s wanderings in Dublin.

Johnson uses the mythical material differently. In his narration, he disguises reality as myth (9). He does this, among other things, by painting an archaic worldview with present gods, e.g., Hermes, the Messenger, the Unreliable One. He archaizes the language—uses neologisms and fixed epithets mixed with more down-to-earth language: “knew exactly when it was he lost the three, four teeth, how the Earth-Embracer, Poseidon, that bastard, knocked a few tusks out of his jaw.” The presentation becomes vivid because Odysseus’s inner monologues are interspersed with insertions by the Reteller. As narrator, Odysseus transforms reality into myth, while the Reteller seeks the reality behind the myth, often in syntactically intricate sentences. The plot of the episode is simple, but not the presentation, which is filled with reflections on what Odysseus feels and with digressions and storytelling, both by Odysseus and others (e.g., Calypso’s story).

Both Ulysses and Strändernas svall were produced in postwar periods. Ulysses was published in parts from 1918 to 1920 (although the complete manuscript was not published until 1922), and Strändernas svall was published in 1946 with the subtitle “A novel of the present.” There are scant allusions to the recently ended war in the Calypso episode in Ulysses: when Bloom passes O’Rourke’s shop, he catches, “the Russians—they’ll be but a mouthful for the Japanese.” One can see Joyce’s Bloom as a typical representative of “the lost generation” after the First World War: a decent person, lacking initiative, resigned, and without ambition. Johnson’s Odysseus can be perceived as an individual marked by the Second World War: a de-glorified, indecisive war hero, tormented by war memories—a contrast to the hero of the Odyssey.