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Exploring Joyce's Ulysses (ENGL40028)
HonoursPoints: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)
Overview
Availability | March |
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This subject explores the greatest and most influential literary work of art of the twentieth-century: James Joyce’s Ulysses. Through seminars and class discussion, we will embark on a close reading of the eighteen episodes of the novel, each of which has a distinctive style, structure and form. The subject will highlight the humour of the novel, its use of parody and play, as well as its celebrated deployment of stream-of-consciousness technique. It will assess Joyce’s rewriting of Homer’s Odyssey, as part of its ‘mythic method’, and how its elaborate textual and literary architecture tells one day in the life of a Jewish Dubliner more exhaustively and intimately than any other act of literary expression.
It will also highlight the various contexts of the novel – Irish, European and global – and its deep involvement with the politics of its era, including nationalism, imperialism, and ideas of race and gender. Finally, this subject will locate Ulysses within development of the modern novel and the artistic, literary and intellectual revolution known as ‘modernism’.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject, students should be able to:
- Discuss the narrative form, structure and literary styles used in Joyce's Ulysses
- Understand the relation of Ulysses to its various contexts, cultural, social and political
- Critique Ulysses in relation to artistic and aesthetic agendas, including modernism and postcolonialism.
Generic skills
- Ability to apply new research skills and critical methods to a field of inquiry
- Demonstrated critical awareness and the ability to shape and strengthen arguments
- Effective and articulate communication of arguments and ideas, both in writing and verbally to others.
Last updated: 24 May 2024