Editing Leopold Bloom (section)

==Fictional biography==
Bloom is introduced to the reader as a man of appetites:
[[File:Leopold Bloom plaque Szombathely Fő tér 40-41.jpg|thumb|Plaque in memory of Bloom in his (fictional) ancestral home, [[Szombathely]]]]
<blockquote>
Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the [[Offal|inner organs]] of beasts and fowls. He liked thick [[Giblets|giblet]] soup, nutty [[gizzard]]s, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried [[Cod|hencods]]' [[roe]]s. But most of all, he liked grilled [[Lamb and mutton|mutton]] kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
</blockquote>

The Bloom character, born in 1866, is the only son of Rudolf Virág (a [[Hungarian Jews|Hungarian Jew]] from [[Szombathely]] who emigrated to Ireland, converted from [[Judaism]] to [[Protestantism]], changed his name to Rudolph Bloom<ref>''Note'': virág means "flower" in Hungarian, hence the new surname, "Bloom"</ref> and later died by suicide), and of Ellen Higgins, an [[Irish Catholic]].<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476739|title=The Religion of Ellen Higgins Bloom|author=Steinberg, Erwin R.|year=1986|journal=James Joyce Quarterly|volume=23|issue=3|pages=350–355|jstor=25476739 }}</ref> He is [[uncircumcised]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Joyce |first=James |date=2 Feb 1922 |title=Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Nausicaa/356 |url=https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Annotations_to_James_Joyce%27s_Ulysses/Nausicaa/356 |website=en.wikibooks.org |quote=Well the foreskin is not back.}}</ref> They lived in [[Clanbrassil Street, Dublin|Clanbrassil Street]], [[Portobello, Dublin|Portobello]]. Bloom converted to Catholicism to marry [[Molly Bloom|Marion (Molly) Tweedy]] on 8 October 1888. The couple has one daughter, Millicent (Milly), born in 1889; their son Rudolph (Rudy), born in December 1893, died after 11 days. The family lives at [[7 Eccles Street]] in Dublin.

Episodes (chapters) in ''Ulysses'' relate a series of encounters and incidents in Bloom's contemporary odyssey through Dublin in the course of the single day of 16 June 1904 (although episodes 1 to 3, 9 and, to a lesser extent, 7, are primarily concerned with [[Stephen Dedalus]], who in the plan of the story is the counterpart of [[Telemachus]]). Joyce [[aficionados]] celebrate 16 June as "[[Bloomsday]]".

As the day unfolds, Bloom's thoughts turn to the affair between Molly and her manager, Hugh "Blazes" Boylan (obliquely, through, for instance, telltale [[earworm]]s), and, prompted by the funeral of his friend Paddy Dignam, the death of his child, Rudy. The absence of a son may be what leads him to take a shine to Stephen, for whom he goes out of his way in the book's latter episodes, rescuing him from a brothel, walking him back to his own house, and even offering him a place there to study and work. The reader becomes familiar with Bloom's tolerant, humanistic outlook, his penchant for [[voyeurism]] and his (purely [[wikt:epistolary|epistolary]]) infidelity. Bloom detests violence, and his relative indifference to [[Irish nationalism]] leads to disputes with some of his peers (most notably 'the Citizen' in the [[Cyclopes|Cyclops]] chapter). Although Bloom has never been a practising Jew, converted to Roman Catholicism to marry Molly, and has in fact received Christian [[baptism]] on three occasions, he is of partial Jewish descent and is sometimes ridiculed and threatened because of his being perceived as a Jew.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/182795|title="Are You Protestant Jews or Roman Catholic Jews?": Literary Representations of Being Jewish in Ireland|first=Catherine|last=Hezser|date=18 May 2005|journal=Modern Judaism |volume=25|issue=2|pages=159–188|doi=10.1093/mj/kji011 |via=Project MUSE}}</ref>

[[Richard Ellmann]], Joyce's biographer, described Bloom as "a nobody", who "has virtually no effect upon the life around him". In this Ellmann found nobility: "The divine part of Bloom is simply his humanity – his assumption of a bond between himself and other created beings."<ref>Goodman, Walter (14 May 1987).  [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/14/obituaries/richard-ellmann-dies-at-69-eminent-james-joyce-scholar.html ''Richard Ellmann dies at 69; Eminent James Joyce Scholar'']. The New York Times.</ref> [[Hugh Kenner]] took issue with the view of Bloom as "the little man", citing textual evidence to show that he is taller than average. He also has "relative wealth, an exalted dwelling-place, handsome features, a polysemous wit, a famously beautiful wife". Kenner admitted that the evidence came late in the text. He argued that Joyce gave the initial impression of Bloom's ordinariness because of the parallel with Ulysses, whose "normal strategy was to withhold his identity".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kenner |first1=Hugh |title="Ulysses" |date=1987 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins Press |pages=43–45 |url=https://archive.org/details/ulysses1987kenn/mode/2up?view=theater |access-date=1 March 2024}}</ref> Others such as Joseph Campbell see him more as an Everyman figure, a world (cosmopolis) traveler who, like Homer's Odysseus, "visited the dwellings of many people and considered their ways of thinking" (''Odyssey'' 1.3).

One critic has argued that Joyce used the doctrines of the Incarnation cited early in ''Ulysses'' to characterize his relation to both Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom and their relation to each other. The theme of "[[reincarnation]]", also introduced early in the novel, has been linked to one of the doctrines to signify that Bloom is the mature Joyce in another form and that Joyce speaks through him.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lang |first1=Frederick K. |title="Ulysses" and the Irish God |date=1993 |publisher=Bucknell University Press, Associated University Presses |location=Lewisburg, London and Toronto |isbn=0838751504 |pages=20–2, 67–91 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F-BaAAAAMAAJ}}</ref>