Customer Reviews

Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses [Revised and Expanded Edition]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Several years ago, when I embarked on my first reading of Ulysses, I purchased this book to help me deal with the famous Joycian allusions.

I was stunned by the size and careful detail of this annotation, since it rivals the size of Ulysses itself. For the first 60 pages or so of Ulysses, I religiously read every annotation for every allusion. And then I realized that I was missing out on the beauty of the book as a work of art. So I set the annotation down and continued reading Ulysses without help. Yes, there were many parts I failed to understand, but I loved the book nonetheless, and appreciated it as one of the 20th century's greatest pieces of art.

The annotation should serve not as a companion during a first reading of Ulysses, but rather as a reference for future, more detailed readings. As I have read parts of Ulysses again, I have turned to the annotation to guide me and help me understand the intricate details of the book. It is a scholarly endeavor, and one must always remember that Joyce meant to be enigmatic - to enjoy his genius does not necessarily mean to understand every enigma and allusion.

Savor the words of James Joyce, then savor his intellectual cavortings through this marvelous annotation. Do not use the annotation as a crutch to read Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, but trust your mind to learn his language.

This large book is sort of the "Ulysses Bible." Vast and aggressively comprehensive in scope, it is an astonishingly complete glossing of the text. Every name, place, event, and historical figure is given a brief explanation; and all non-standard English is defined, from foreign tongues to the Anglicized Irish slang. Poems and songs -- even those only briefly mentioned in the text -- are often printed in full, and detailed maps are provided for each section. The chapter "Oxen of the Sun" is given a full analysis, clarifying each paragraph in terms of the author and/or style that Joyce is parodying. In addition, one of the appendices analyzes "Aeolus" for its full repertoire of rhetorical devices. I also find it amusing that the book points out several of Joyce's little errors. (Excuse me -- "portals of discovery.") This is not a quick reference book for the faint of heart; but for a full study of Ulysses it is invaluable.

Just a heads up that this is NOT an annotated edition of Ulysses (as I mistakenly thought in purchasing)(duh). It is 600-some pages of notes only and does not include the text of the novel.

"Ulysses Annotated" is an essential Book for reading, and understanding Ulysses, and the previous four reviewers are right on the mark. It is impossible, even for a well read reader to understand Joyce's allusions without this extremely well presented, and well priced, Reference book.

Introduction, prefaces and notes explain how to use this book, and how it was compiled. Each episode is preceeded by a map of where the action takes place helping the reader to visualize the movements of Bloom and Stephen. Each entry is preceeded by the Chapter Number and Line Number according to the Gabler edition of "Ulysses". In addition, a fairly comprehensive index cross-references all entries. If the reader wants to find all allusions pertaining, for example, to the Book of Luke, these can be easily found. I found this Index quite useful.

Personally, I found the following method best for using the book. First, to skim through the allusions, marking those of particular interest, and then laying the book side by side with the Novel and reading the Episode.

As for realiability, I took Gifford and Seidman up on their offered Short Title List, and was able to find almost every reference, including "Thom's Official Directory of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1904", and have found them to be reliable in their entries.

This Book should suffice for reading, and understanding Ulysses, though many a reader may get caught up by Joyce, as I did, so that the following may be useful: Weldon Thornton: "Allusions in Ulysses", Richard Ellman: "James Joyce", Harry Blamires: "The New Bloomsday Book", Stuart Gilbert: "James Joyce's Ulysses", and of course "The Riverside Shakespeare", "The Oddyssey", and the Bible.

All the surface details, references to mythology, history, politics, music, literature, etc, can be found in this book (Joyce's novel is not included within, just the annotations, but it still clocks in at 700 pages!). If you want to know exactly what Joyce was referring to--this is the place. However, it won't necessarily tell you what he MEANT (aheheh, some things must be left to the reader).

Of course, if you've never read Ulysses you don't need to know every obscure reference. Just pick up REJOYCE or THE NEW BLOOMSDAY BOOK, which have generalized overviews of the novel. This is for the deep scholars. But as Joyce said, all he expects of his readers is that they study his works for the rest of their lives.

This will keep you busy.

Several years ago, when I embarked on my first reading of Ulysses, I purchased this book to help me deal with the famous Joycian allusions.

I was stunned by the size and careful detail of this annotation, since it rivals the size of Ulysses itself. For the first 60 pages or so of Ulysses, I religiously read every annotation for every allusion. And then I realized that I was missing out on the beauty of the book as a work of art. So I set the annotation down and continued reading Ulysses without help. Yes, there were many parts I failed to understand, but I loved the book nonetheless, and appreciated it as one of the 20th century's greatest pieces of art.

The annotation should serve not as a companion during a first reading of Ulysses, but rather as a reference for future, more detailed readings. As I have read parts of Ulysses again, I have turned to the annotation to guide me and help me understand the intricate details of the book. It is a scholarly endeavor, and one must always remember that Joyce meant to be enigmatic - to enjoy his genius does not necessarily mean to understand every enigma and allusion.

Savor the words of James Joyce, then savor his intellectual cavortings through this marvelous annotation. Do not use the annotation as a crutch to read Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, but trust your mind to learn his language.

The authors admirably provide notes to words, phrases, and names throughout Ulysses, with revealing notes on Joyce's religious, literary, and historical allusions. The authors illuminate Irish colloquialisms ("I blow him out about you;" explained here as "I make him feel proud (or vain) of our acquaintance), as well as long entangled references within inner dialogue and narrative. It expands one's appreciation of "Ulysses" (and Joyce's genius), but it can also slow down the pleasure of reading and just enjoying the sounds of it.

I suggest that one use the Annotations to enhance, as opposed to impede, one's enjoyment of the book; one need not investigate every one of the twists and turns in Joyce's complex referential labyrinth. It's also fun to read the Annotations after reading a chapter of Ulysses, and compare one's prior impressions with one's (now almost encyclopedic) decoded version. Some will also enjoy just the vast amount of information contained here and read it out of sequence, or even long after reading "Ulysses."

There's an introductory overview of the book and its context, and each chapter includes a comparison to the Greek "The Odyssey." However, the bulk of the book is devoted to very thorough explanations of the text. The authors note that they walk the tricky line between explanation and interpretation, I think they succeed in emphasizing the former. This book does not provide lengthy interpretations of the themes and literary devices abounding in Ulysses--that is not its intent. Rather, it is a well-written translator of the words and general structure.

Annotations are keyed to the 1984 edition of Ulysses, the standard 1961 Random House edition, and the Modern Library and Vintage editions. The revised "Annotations" contains over a thousand corrections and additions to the first edition. Not indispensable, but almost so; it elucidates the seemingly ineluctable, and expands one's understanding and enjoyment of the text.

Gifford's book offers fascinating glosses and contextual annotations for Ulysses, but was not quite what I was looking for to help me with my first attempt at the book. The annotations are mostly disjoint explanations of specific allusions and references.

There are other guides to Ulysses that are better suited for the novice Joyce reader, helping the reader to keep track of the plot, the progress of the Odyssey and Hamlet corelations and explaining the shifts in style through the book. This kind of hand-holding may be unnecessary for more sophisticated readers, but for my first read, it was essential!

I used this book from about pg 200 of Ulysses onward, and I think it's just about indispensable. There should not be any embarrassment in this: unless you know Latin, German, French, Hebrew (together with a good cross-section of literature from all these languages), Catholic & Jewish culture, English literature more or less entire, and (hardest of all) Dublin slang, culture, politics, and all the knick-knacks of daily life from 1904, Ulysses presents many baffling passages. This book helps out with all these things, plus plenty of other stuff: myths, songs, internal reference cross-indexing (for those of us who can't remember that Stephen Daedalus thought of the same Latin quotation 600 pages earlier), Joyce's basic scheme for each section, and more.

There are two failings, and they are minor: (1) there are still plenty of obscure words and phrases that aren't annotated (the introduction acknowledges this) and conversely (2) there are a number of things that don't need annotations that get them (particularly galling are the annotations that simply tell you that they don't know what Joyce is talking about either).

Still, an essential reference, and pretty entertaining in its own right (like flipping through an encyclopedia or Brewer's Phrase & Fable).

I am still digesting "Ulysses." I read it while walking around Dublin a few years ago. It was marvelous to trace the steps of Leopold and Molly, and to see what they "saw," but the novel remains a distant pleasure to the reader. I must admit it is not the most accessible book ever written, but it gets four stars for its intent ... and that it is better than "Finnegan's Wake." Be warned: This book is not for the casual reader. But this annotated edition makes it all worthwhile. You'll get genuine, comprehensible guidance. If you must read "Ulysses," this edition might be most helpful.