The Cambridge Companion to Ulysses

Through a series of incisive and insightful essays by accomplished scholars, this Companion offers readers a new window to the world of Ulysses.

Sean Latham (Edited by)

9781107423909, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 October 2014

244 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.36 kg

Few books in the English language seem to demand a companion more insistently than James Joyce's Ulysses, a work that at once entices and terrifies readers with its interwoven promises of pleasure, scandal, difficulty and mastery. This volume offers fourteen concise and accessible essays by accomplished scholars that explore this masterpiece of world literature. Several essays examine specific aspects of Ulysses, ranging from its plot and characters to the questions it raises about the strangeness of the world and the density of human cultures. Others address how Joyce created this novel, why it became famous and how it continues to shape both popular and literary culture. Like any good companion, this volume invites the reader to engage in an ongoing conversation about the novel and its lasting ability to entice, rankle, absorb, and enthrall.

1. Writing Ulysses Michael Groden
2. Reception history Joseph Brooker
3. Afterlife Jonathan Goldman
4. Beginnings Scarlett Baron
5. Character, plot, myth Margot Norris
6. Setting: Dublin 1904/1922 Enda Duffy
7. Endings Maud Ellmann
8. City circuits: 'Aeolus' and 'Wandering Rocks' Michael Rubenstein
9. Memory: 'Sirens' Marjorie Howes
10. Interruption: 'Cyclops' and 'Nausicaa' Sean Latham
11. Difficulty: 'Oxen of the Sun' and 'Circe' Cheryl Herr
12. Intertextuality Brandon Kershner
13. Bodies Vike Plock
14. Symbols and things Paul Saint-Amour.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]