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James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays

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I am no Joycean scholar but as "Ulysses" is consistently rated as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century I was determined to get through it and understand it as best I could. This collection of essays I found very helpful and while the authors have way too much time on their hands to be considering Joyce's novel to the depth they do (one of them actually retraced the steps of all the characters in the Wandering Rocks episode to determine whether Joyce's narrative was realistic), I did not find it a difficult read and it was interesting to have a variety of views from different critics in the one volume. I doubt whether I would have made it through "Ulysses" without this by my side, and also "Ulysses Annotated". I think I will leave "Finnegan's Wake" for the next metempsychosis.

These essays are mainly for the very well educated in literature who are unduly interested in Ulysses, and/or doing scholarly research on James Joyce. However, even attempting to read these essays does help one to get more meaning out of Joyce's great novel. These essays are hardly any easier to read than the novel itself, but if you have the intelligence and education to understand and appreciate them, it's certainly worth the effort. The essays cover all the chapters of the novel individually--not the novel as a whole--so if there is one particular chapter you are interested in learning more about, or having trouble understanding, you can find an essay that concentrates only on that particular chapter.