The significance of the Homeric parallel, the correspondent relationship between Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer`s Odyssey, has been highly controversial. It is largely due to the elusive ways it functions; the direction of the parallel seems sometimes straightforward, sometimes reverse, and sometimes promiscuous. This leads to different interpretations of the nature of the overall Homeric parallel: direct, ironic, and free. The `free adaptation` theory, though the most valid among them, converges in most cases to a rather questionable view of the parallel as nothing more than a neutral, mechanical, and formal device. Metempsychosis, I would postulate, is a structural frame of reference capable of serving to fully explain the complex mode of the parallel. The idea of `the transmigration of souls`, or the persistence of the same identity through different bodies, throws excellent light on that apparently contradictory aspect of the parallel which accommodates both identical and divergent elements. From the perspective of metempsychosis, the modern novel is a different version of the ancient epic. Here, the crucial soul common to both works is the cyclic pattern of repeated adventures and homecomings, which is in itself consistent with the metempsychotic mode of continuance of identity through changes. This is embodied in all the three major figures of the novel, who, like their ancient analogues, illustrate the pattern of wandering and return.