Dartmouth's Professor James A. W. Heffernan maps the brilliance, passion, humanity, and humor of James Joyce's modern Odyssey in this 24-lecture series. Joyce's great novel Ulysses is a big, richly imagined, and intricately organized book with a huge reputation.
Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful.
Joyce and the Victorians By Tracey Teets Schwartze
Joyce and the Victorians excavates the heretofore largely unexplored territory of the late Victorian and Edwardian cultural contexts of Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake.
Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico's New Science and Finnegan's Wake By Donald Phillip Verene
This is the first book to examine in full the interconnections between Giambattista Vico's new science and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Maintaining that Joyce is the greatest modern "interpreter" of Vico, Donald Phillip Verene demonstrates how images from Joyce's work offer keys to Vico's philosophy. Verene presents the entire course of Vico's philosophical thought as it develops in his major works, with Joyce's words and insights serving as a guide. The book devotes a chapter to each period of Vico's thought, from his early orations on education to his anti-Cartesian metaphysics and his conception of universal law, culminating in his new science of the history of nations. Verene analyzes Vico's major works, including all three editions of the New Science. The volume also features a detailed chronology of the philosopher's career, historical illustrations related to his works, and an extensive bibliography of Vico scholarship and all English translations of his writings.
James Joyce's Ulysses: A Reference Guide by Bernard McKenna
Perhaps the most important literary achievement of the 20th century, Ulysses is also one of the most challenging. This reference introduces beginning readers to Joyce and his novel, removes some of the obstacles readers face when confronting his text, provides background information to facilitate understanding of the nuances of the book, and illuminates the critical dialogue surrounding his work. With the help of this guide, beginning readers will discover the rewards of reading the novel and find that they outweigh the potential obstacles to understanding Ulysses. To introduce readers to Joyce and his work, the volume begins with a short biography and a survey of the importance and cultural impact of Ulysses. Most beginning readers find it difficult to follow Joyce's plot, and so they abandon the text in frustration. Thus the book includes the most detailed available plot summary of Joyce's novel. The chapters that follow overview the novel's publication history; its historical and cultural contexts, including Modernism, Irish literature and history, and political and social trends; major themes and issues; Joyce's narrative art, including his character development, language, images, and style; and the academic and critical response to the work. The volume closes with a bibliographical essay.