The article deals with the notion of intertextuality which is compulsory for all texts. It overviews intertextuality as the main category of modernist texts which is exemplified by works of such English writer as James Joyce who is considered to be the most vivid example of the realisation of the text category of intertextuality in the modernist literature. The extensive illustrative material enables to single out the main key features of the modernist intertextuality. The allusions registered in the analysed literary text are classified according to their literary sources, which are the works of W. Shakespeare, the Holy Bible, and the works of other writers. The article also argues that W. Shakespeare is the main building material of Ulysses, its connecting link, its permanent background. It also states that although allusions and quotations from Homer’s work are not the most numerous in the novel, they play a significant role in its content, as the poem by Homer gave the novel its name, genre and architectonics.