“It will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant.”
-James Joyce
Prelude
I have started reading the 1986 Gabler edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, widely regarded as one of the most difficult (and best) novels of the 20th century, due to its stream-of-consciousness style, unstructured format, and the depth and magnitude of the allusions, puns, and pastiches embedded within the text. To help me through the book, I also have an annotation compiled by Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman.
Obviously, there are several ways to approach a text as monumental and metaphorical a book as Ulysses. Joyce himself provided two separate “schema,” the Linati and the Gilbert, for readers to use when working their way through the text. Using them as well as the annotation, I will examine each episode separately, focusing on whatever element of the episode strikes me most.