Reading Joyce's Ulysses

Catalog description

A thorough episode-by-episode study of one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, James Joyce's Ulysses. The emphasis will be on the joy and fun of reading this wonderful and often playful masterwork. We shall place Ulysses in the context of Joyce's writing career, Irish culture, and literary modernism. We shall explore the relationship between Ulysses and other experiments in modernism and show how Ulysses redefines the concepts of epic, hero, and reader. We shall also examine Ulysses as a political novel, including Joyce's response to Yeats and the Irish Revival; Joyce's role in the debate about the direction of Irish politics after Parnell; and Joyce's response to British colonial occupation of Ireland. No previous experience with Joyce is required. (ENGL-PST)