Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Eumaeus/616

Annotations

in medias res     (Latin) into the middle of the story. In his Ars Poetica, the Roman poet Horace thus describes the ideal epic poet:

Ars Poetica

Nec gemino bellum Troianum orditur ab ovo: Semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res, Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit ....

Nor does he begin the Trojan war from the double egg: Always he hurries on to the outcome; and into the middle of things, Just as if they were well known, he carries off the listener ....

The Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid all begin in medias res.