Ulysses (Diversion Classics)

James Joyce

Aug 2015 · Diversion Books

About this eBook

Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms.

A classic work that defies genre and turns form on its head, James Joyce's masterpiece is a defining force behind the modernist movement. The rambling tale of a single day in Dublin across the lives of many characters, it is at first glance chaotic but in fact meticulously structured. Although often contested for its challenging subject matter, ULYSSES nevertheless remains a staple of twentieth-century literature.

About the author

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a large Catholic family. Joyce was a very good pupil, studying poetics, languages, and philosophy at Clongowes Wood College, Belvedere College, and the Royal University in Dublin. Joyce taught school in Dalkey, Ireland, before marrying in 1904. Joyce lived in Zurich and Triest, teaching languages at Berlitz schools, and then settled in Paris in 1920 where he figured prominently in the Parisian literary scene, as witnessed by Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Joyce's collection of fine short stories, Dubliners, was published in 1914, to critical acclaim. Joyce's major works include A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and Stephen Hero. Ulysses, published in 1922, is considered one of the greatest English novels of the 20th century. The book simply chronicles one day in the fictional life of Leopold Bloom, but it introduces stream of consciousness as a literary method and broaches many subjects controversial to its day. As avant-garde as Ulysses was, Finnegans Wake is even more challenging to the reader as an important modernist work. Joyce died just two years after its publication, in 1941.