Ulysses

100

Kindle

Third Person

Fiction

944

3

2018-06-26 18:01:51

One of the most important works of modernist literature, James Joyce’s ”Ulysses” was originally published in serial format from 1918 to 1920 and then published in a single edition in 1922, which this edition is drawn from. ”Ulysses” chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. While the novel appears largely unstructured at first glance it is in fact very closely paralleled to Homer’s ”Odyssey,” containing eighteen episodes that correspond to various parts of Homer’s work. Filled with experimental forms of prose, stream of consciousness, puns, parodies, and allusions that Joyce himself hoped would ”keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.” This expansive work is considered one of the great works of English literature and a must read for fans of the modernist genre.

This iconic work of experimental modernism “comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence” (The New York Times).

Taking place on June 16, 1904, Ulysses follows the itinerant journeys of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus as they make their way through an ordinary day in Dublin. With stream-of-conscious narration, Joyce weaves a sprawling yet incisive portrait of his characters, the nature of desire, and Dublin itself.

First published in Paris in 1922, Joyce’s masterwork was once banned for obscenity in the United States and Britain. Hailed as a work of genius by Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and many others, Ulysses remains one of the most significant works in English literature.


About the author

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century.

Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he utilised. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism and his published letters.

Joyce was born in 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin—about half a mile from his mother’s birthplace in Terenure—into a middle-class family on the way down. A brilliant student, he excelled at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father’s alcoholism and unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.

In 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated permanently to continental Europe with his partner (and later wife) Nora Barnacle. They lived in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce’s fictional universe centres on Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, ”For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

Bio from from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.

Open Road Media

9781420934496

United States

2022-02-01

2022

1

English

2025-06-21

2018-06-26 18:01:51