Ulysses: The Shocking Novel

by James Joyce

Overview

James Joyce's astonishing masterpiece, Ulysses, tells of the diverse events which befall Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904, during which Bloom's voluptuous wife, Molly, commits adultery. Initially deemed obscene in England and the USA, this richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its Modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, Ulysses offers the reader a life-changing experience.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788834167250
Publisher:	Diamond Book Publishing
Publication date:	08/07/2019
Series:	James Joyce Collection , #2
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jeri Johnson is Fellow and Tutor in English at Exeter College, Oxford University.

Date of Birth:

February 2, 1882

Date of Death:

January 13, 1941

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Zurich, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., University College, Dublin, 1902

Website:

http://www.jamesjoyce.ie

Read an Excerpt

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Milligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

—Back to barracks, he said sternly.

He added in a preacher's tone:

—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all. 

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm. 

—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

—The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek.

What People are Saying About This

Edmund Wilson

One of the most remarkable features of Ulysses is its interest as an investigation into the nature of human consciousness and behavior...Joyce has studied what we are accustomed to consider the dirty, the trivial and the base elements in our lives with the restlessness of a modern psychologist; and he has also...done justice to all those elements in our lives which we have been in the habit of describing by such names as love, nobility, truth and beauty.

From the Publisher

"Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua immortalized Rabelais, and The Brothers Karamazov immortalized Dostoyevsky.... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence."
-The New York Times

"To my mind one of the most significant and beautiful books of our time."
-Gilbert Seldes, in The Nation

"Talk about understanding "feminine psychology"— I have never read anything to surpass it, and I doubt if I have ever read anything to equal it."
-Arnold Bennett

"In the last pages of the book, Joyce soars to such rhapsodies of beauty as have probably never been equaled in English prose fiction."
-Edmund Wilson, in The New Republic

Introduction

The 100 Best English Language Novels of the Century

"We tried to pick books that were of great merit and proven over time." -- Christopher Cerf, chairman of the Modern Library Editorial Board

On Monday, July 20th, the editorial board of the Modern Library released a list of the 100 best English-language novels of the century. Topping the list was Ulysses, the unique, original novel that recounts a day in the lives of a group of Dubliners. The same book that was banned in the United States from 1920 to 1933 for obscenity now tops the list of novels written in English in this century, followed in descending order by The Great Gatsby, A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Lolita, and Brave New World.

The editorial board that created this list comprised Christopher Cerf, Gore Vidal, Daniel J. Boorstin, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, A. S. Byatt, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and William Styron. The top five novels originally tied for first place, all selected by nine out of ten editorial board members. Then, in another vote, the board members listed the books in order, resulting in the conclusive top five.

All the judges agreed that Ulysses was deserving of the rank of top book of the century. James Joyce was a brilliant author who, many think, ignited modern literature much as Picasso ignited 20th-century art. Joyce spent seven years working on this novel, as evidenced in his masterful prose. But is it the best English-language novel of the 20th century? Why are there only eight women on the list of 100? Is Catcher In the Rye really the 64th best novel of our century?

Editorial Reviews

Ulysses is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century. . . It is likely that there is no one writing English today that could parallel Mr. Joyce's feat, and it is also likely that few would care to do it were it capable. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, May 1922

New York Times Book Review

Joyce’s parallel use of The Odyssey…has the importance of a scientific discovery…It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history…It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern world possible for art.” –T. S. Eliot

“Ulysses has enough verbal splendor to furnish a legion of novels…You will have difficulty finding a fuller portrait of the natural man.” –Harold Bloom, The Western Canon

“One might almost risk praising [Ulysses] for being a work of literature in which the spirit of one man is eternally confirmed in all its complexity.” –from the Introduction

With an Introduction by Craig Raine

From the Publisher