How to Read 'Ulysses', and Why

This short guidebook, written specifically for first-time readers of Ulysses by a veteran teacher of Joyce's novel, offers a way in to one of the most pleasure-giving books ever created. After an introduction surveying Joyce's techniques, both traditional (the creation of plausible characters and a fully realized Dublin setting) and modern (interior monologue, the Homeric parallels, stylistic experimentation), an episode-by-episode commentary leads readers through the fictional events of June 16, 1904, explaining obscurities, identifying main themes, translating foreign phrases in short, making understandable the world of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold and Molly Bloom. An afterword looks at Ulysses as a whole, arguing that like all comic masterpieces it applies a sophisticated treatment to ordinary materials. An annotated bibliography suggests further resources for studying the novel.

Autorentext

The Author: Jefferson Hunter, Professor of English at Smith College, received his Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University and has taught there as well as at Amherst and Middlebury colleges. In addition to numerous reviews and articles on modern literature and film, he is the author of Edwardian Fiction and Image and Word: The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts. He has taught Ulysses for more than twenty-five years.