That feeling of being suddenly confronted by the challenges of a new language is, of course, the experience of most readers as they work through Ulysses. Often the reader is expected to decode material without necessarily enjoying full knowledge of who is speaking. This is also true here of Bloom who listens to songs and voices coming from a nearby room. Such disembodied voices were becoming commonplace by 1904 in the age of the electronic recording. These voices connect also with those episodes of Ulysses which lack a named narrator. The overall effect is to make the reader feel as if he or she has been set down in a zone at once familiar and strange, like Robinson Crusoe placed suddenly among the denizens of a modern city.
Declan Kiberd, Ulysses and Us