1930’s, this banned novel had even found its way into libraries as well as thousands of private homes. Since customs officials were unable to stop this smuggling, the task of censorship fell to individual librarians. In a 1930 address, George F. Bowerman, of the District of Columbia’s public library system, wanted to relegateUlysses “to a medical library or a library of abnormal psychology.”

Eventually Random House, an American publisher, decided to force a test case. After signing a contract with Joyce in 1932, Random House arranged to have a copy of Ulysses seized by customs officials in New York. The seized copy was bulging with copies of favorable reviews that had been pasted in—a ploy that was necessary in order to ensure that the reviews would be admitted as evidence in court. In the ensuing legal case, United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, the government declared that the book was obscene under the terms of the Tariff Act of 1930. Judge John M. Woolsey presided over book’s trial, which opened in the fall of 1933 and closed with a decision lifting the ban in early December. Woolsey significantly liberalized the definition of obscenity in the United States. Whereas the Hicklin test could ban a book based upon a single paragraph, Woolsey decided that obscene intent should be determined by viewing the work as a whole—even if some passages could give offense. The decision was upheld by an appeals court, and Random House formally published Ulysses the following January.

While Woolsey’s decision legalized publication of the book, censorship continued in other forms. In 1960, for example, Caedmon Records released recorded readings of two of the novel’s characters, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly. The publisher made no mention of the fact that the recorded passages had been expurgated. A film adaptation of the book made by Joseph Strick in 1967 was heavily cut by the British Board of Film Censors—especially Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of the novel. However, the board later relented, and the excised material was restored in 1970. Ironically, a 1995 edition of the book in China—a country long known for censorship—was published intact.

*Dublin

*Dublin. Ireland’s capital city and principal east coast port on the Irish Sea, through which a young Irish writer and teacher named Stephen Dedalus (whom Joyce introduced in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1914) and the Jewish advertising salesman Leopold Bloom wander until they eventually meet. The novel explores streets, shops, public houses, and countless other places found along their routes.

In 1904, Dublin is a city with a population of about three hundred thousand people. Ireland is still under the rule of Great Britain, whose local governor lives in a regal house in Dublin’s Phoenix Park and governs from Dublin Castle. The city as a whole is a complex mix, with both wretched slums and lingering remnants of eighteenth century elegance. More than twenty thousand families live in one-room tenement apartments, many of which house four or more people. Dublin is also a city with an interesting history of Anglo-Irish literary and cultural activity and a kind of urban energy that tends to countermand James Joyce’s estimate of psychological “paralysis.” Dublin provided Joyce with the raw material for a cosmos built on patient attention to the minute particulars of city life. The dense texture of metropolitan detail in Ulysses complements and offers paths into the psychological substance of the novel’s characters.

Many chapters depict the protagonists as well as multiple groups of people traveling routes across the landscape of Dublin. Throughout the book, the substance of the city is solidified by the landmarks and streets that are mentioned, ranging from well-known places such as Mountjoy Square, Grafton Street, and Phoenix Park, to a diversity of shops, pubs, tramcar stops, and quays.

*Sandycove

*Sandycove. Suburb southeast of Dublin now known as Dun Laoghlaire, in which Dedalus, in one of the versions of the narrative consciousness (along with Leopold and Molly Bloom) that operates in the novel, is living as the novel opens. Dedalus shares rooms with the medical student Buck Mulligan in Martello Tower, built on the Dublin coast as one of seventy-four similar defensive constructions erected in anticipation of a French invasion. (The tower was later converted into the James Joyce Tower Museum.)

*Dalkey Avenue

*Dalkey Avenue. Sandycove street on which the Clifton School, at which Joyce taught briefly as a young man, stands, and the location, near the Martello Tower, of the unnamed school from which Stephen is about to resign when the story begins.

*Sandymount

*Sandymount. Beach several miles up the coast from Sandycove, along which Dedalus walks past the decaying house of his uncle Richie Goulding in the chapter that concludes the first section of the novel. Later in the novel, Bloom is entranced by the sight of Gertie MacDowell and her friends on the same beach.

*Eccles Street

*Eccles Street (EH-clees). North Dublin street on which Leopold Bloom lives with his wife, Molly, at number 7. Their home is a worn-down but still genteel, three-story house. As Bloom begins his wanderings on June 16, 1904, he crosses to the “bright side” (southwest) of Eccles Street, then walks to Dorset Street, notices the sun near the steeple of St. George’s church on Temple Street and passes St. Joseph’s National School, on the way to the Dlugacz butcher shop. These accurate and very specific details establish the factual ground for an inventive series of imaginative devices that Joyce uses to create the reality of the lives of the inhabitants of Dublin.

Toward the end of the novel, Bloom finds Dedalus passed out in Dublin’s red-light district and walks back to his house with him. Dedalus declines Bloom’s offer of hospitality. Bloom then retires with his wife, whose soliloquy concludes the novel. Her recollective re-creation of her past with Bloom, as well as her life before, is anchored by a reflection on a moment in their courtship, when she and Bloom were together on Howth Reach, overlooking the sea north of Dublin, and by her thoughts of her girlhood and first love in Gibraltar, also near the ocean.

*Sir John Rogerson’s Quay

*Sir John Rogerson’s Quay. Dublin street that runs along the south bank of the River Liffey, the channel that carries the waters of the Irish Sea through the city and beyond to the west. Joyce would put much more emphasis on the Liffey in Finnegan’s Wake (1939), in which the river spirit is incarnated in the character of Anna Livia Plurabelle, than he does in Ulysses. However, in this novel, Bloom proceeds south, passing a series of streets in the inner city, before picking up a letter at the Westland Row post office.

Bloom’s path through the city continues in the next section as he takes a taxicab along Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse street), noting various prominent buildings (the Ancient Concert Rooms; St. Mark’s Church; the Queen’s Theatre) before his cab crosses O’Connell Bridge, where its passengers see the statue of the huge “cloaked Liberator’s form.” The cab then continues through North Dublin, across the Royal Canal until it arrives at Glasnevin Cemetery for the funeral of Paddy Dignam, an old friend of Bloom who died suddenly of a stroke. Dublin’s waterways carry some suggestion of the rivers of Hades in this section.

*Evening Telegraph

*Evening Telegraph. Newspaper located in an office on North Prince Street, where both Bloom and Stephen go on errands. From there, Bloom walks back across the Liffey and down Grafton Street, passing such notable Dublin landmarks as the Irish Parliament building (now the Bank of Ireland), the offices of the Irish Times, and various small shops, before stopping at Davy Byrne’s “moral pub.” (The pub now advertises its appearance in Ulysses and displays a plaque containing Joyce’s semi-ironic description.) From the pub, he continues on to the National Library in Kildare Street.

*Mabbot Street

*Mabbot Street. Red-light district of Dublin (now considerably transformed by slum clearance), where Bella Cohen’s brothel is situated (on what is now Corporation Street). There, Stephen passes out in the gutter and is rescued by Bloom, who looks for a cab near the Amiens Street Station (now the Connolly Station). Eventually Stephen and Bloom walk back to Bloom’s home, on a course that Joyce describes with precision, street by street.

Homeric world

Homeric world. As a parallel to the episodes in Dublin, Joyce used Homer’s The Odyssey (c. 800 b.c.e.) to amplify the narrative action of his own novel. Among other complementary sites, Paddy Dignam’s funeral is likened to Odysseus’s trip to Hades; the newspaper office is like Homer’s Cave of the Winds, the editor similar to Aeolus, god of wind; Bloom’s assault in Barney Kiernan’s pub recalls the attack of the Cyclops in The Odyssey; the visit to the brothel resembles the Circe episode; and Bloom’s return to his home is like the Penelope section (as emphasized by Molly’s concluding soliloquy), after Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca.

Irish Struggle for Independence: From the 1860s to World War I
The term "home rule" refers to an Irish movement aimed at achieving legislative independence from the United Kingdom, which began in the 1860s. By 1874, home rule supporters secured fifty-six seats in the House of Commons, forming a sort of Irish party in Westminster, initially led by Isaac Butt. Butt was succeeded by William Shaw in 1879 and then by Charles Stewart Parnell in 1880. Under Parnell’s leadership, home rule advocates won eighty-six seats in the 1885 parliamentary election and supported the liberal government of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who introduced the first home rule bill. This bill was defeated in the House of Commons in 1886. Gladstone introduced a second bill in 1892, which passed the House of Commons but was rejected by the House of Lords. In 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith presented the third home rule bill to the House of Commons. Although it passed the House of Commons, the House of Lords used a veto to delay discussion for two years. By this time, World War I had commenced, and Parliament decided to postpone home rule discussions until after the war.

The Rise and Fall of Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell is interred in Glasnevin, the same place where, in the novel, May Dedalus is buried and Patrick Dignam’s body is laid to rest. In the Lestrygonians episode, Parnell’s brother, John Howard Parnell, is seen in a pub corner, and in the Cyclops and Eumaeus episodes, Parnell is passionately discussed. Bloom privately supports Parnell, avoiding any criticism of him. By 1904, although Parnell was no longer present, his influence and memory remained significant.

Born on June 27, 1846, Charles Stewart Parnell received his education at the University of Cambridge. As a young man, he became politically active by supporting Isaac Butt's efforts for home rule. Elected to the House of Commons in 1874, Parnell adopted an obstructionist approach, employing filibusters to delay legislation and draw attention to the conditions and sentiments in Ireland.

In 1879, Parnell became the leader of the newly established National Land League, which aimed to remove English landlords from Ireland. Following his call for a boycott, he was arrested and, from Kilmainham Prison, issued a manifesto urging Irish peasants to refuse rent payments to English landlords. This led to the Kilmainham Treaty with Prime Minister Gladstone, in which the no-rent policy was abandoned, and Parnell encouraged Irish people to avoid violence. Parnell was released on May 2, 1882. Just four days later, the chief secretary and undersecretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish and Thomas Burke, were assassinated in Phoenix Park, Dublin. This event is referenced in the cabstand discussion in the Eumaeus episode and elsewhere in Ulysses.

Speculation about the assassins' identities abounded, as the crime effectively sabotaged Parnell’s new peace strategy and Gladstone’s reform efforts. Ultimately, the radical militant group known as the Irish Invincibles either claimed or was assigned responsibility for the murders. The fallout from these events led to a split between Parnell and Gladstone, eventually bringing down the prime minister’s government.

Parnell’s effectiveness as a leader was irreparably damaged by the 1889 divorce case brought by Lieutenant William Henry O’Shea, a staunch supporter of Parnell, who accused him of adultery. Found guilty of this affair in 1890, Parnell's reputation was destroyed. He and Katherine O’Shea, who had been his lover for years, married shortly after her divorce was finalized, causing further scandal among both the Irish and English. This deepened the divisions among nationalists. Parnell fought unsuccessfully to reunite the nationalists until his death in Brighton on October 6, 1891. The schism persisted and contributed to delays in addressing home rule until World War I broke out.

Stream of Consciousness
The stream-of-consciousness novel delves into the internal thought processes and associative patterns that set characters apart. According to A Handbook to Literature, this type of novel posits that the most important aspect of human existence is its subjective experience. This inner experience is unique, often illogical, and fragmented, with a "pattern of free psychological association . . . dictating the shifting sequence of thought and emotion." Sigmund Freud's work (1856–1939) provided a framework for understanding different psychological layers or consciousness areas. Modern authors like Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner incorporated Freud's theories into their use of the stream-of-consciousness style.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many English novels concentrated more on external events than internal ones, typically following a linear plot structure, as seen in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. When these novels did explore characters' inner thoughts and feelings, it was often through the single perspective of the narrator. Joyce, however, presents the spontaneous flow of thoughts and associations unique to each character in their own voice. In Ulysses, Joyce aims to capture the novel from the perspective of the characters' inner worlds, utilizing their distinctive language patterns.

Edmund Wilson, in his review of the novel, notes that while earlier novelists conveyed their characters' inner thoughts in "one vocabulary and cadence," Joyce portrays "the consciousness of each character . . . in its own appropriate idiom." As Wilson explains, "Joyce succeeds in depicting the raw human mind, wandering aimlessly from one triviality to another." For readers unfamiliar with this style, especially those accustomed to nineteenth-century novels, the challenge is substantial. Such readers expect the novel to present events in a clear sequence, with well-defined characters and relationships. However, with Ulysses, readers must navigate the world from within each character's subjective consciousness as it unfolds.

Autobiographical NovelUlysses partially serves as a depiction of Joyce as a slightly older young artist, returning from Paris during his mother's passing and temporarily residing in the Martello Tower, rented by his friend, Oliver St. John Gogart. Joyce received an education from Jesuits and, in 1904, taught at a boys' school in Dalkey, approximately a mile away from the Martello Tower. Among his literary companions, Joyce shared various theories, including his biographical interpretation of Hamlet. He also pursued a singing career with his fine tenor voice, participating in a singing competition and performing a few times in the summer of 1904. The character of the irresponsible Simon Dedalus in Ulysses is modeled after John Joyce, and the Dedalus sisters live at the same address in the novel as the Joyce family did that year: 7 St. Peter’s Terrace, Cabra. The novel is set on June 16, 1904, to commemorate Joyce's first date with Nora Barnacle, an illiterate hotel maid who later became his long-time partner and eventually his beloved wife. Although Joyce was older than the Stephen Dedalus portrayed in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Stephen in Ulysses had not yet established himself as a writer and artist, Joyce still closely identified with Stephen Dedalus. Stephen's moodiness, self-centeredness, creative puns, and extensive use of literary and religious allusions reflect Joyce's own way of thinking and speaking, expressing his sentiments about Ireland and Catholicism.

AllusionUlysses contains thousands of literary allusions, with parallels to Homer’s epic being just one example among many. A recurring reference is made to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The play is mentioned in the first episode, where comparisons are drawn between Stephen’s melancholy and Prince Hamlet’s brooding nature, as well as between the Danish castle and the Martello Tower. The allusion to Hamlet is also significant in the Scylla and Charybdis episode, set at the National Library. Here, Stephen Dedalus presents his biographical interpretation of Hamlet, based on speculative details about Shakespeare’s life. Although Stephen admits he doesn’t fully believe his own theory, he suggests that Shakespeare identified with King Hamlet’s ghost, saw Prince Hamlet as a representation of his own deceased son, Hamnet, and likened Queen Gertrude to the unfaithful Ann Hathaway. By using Hamlet as a reference and embedding this theory into the novel, Joyce leverages themes familiar to readers of Shakespeare’s play. Parallels are drawn between the deceased King Hamlet, the betrayed husband and father of Prince Hamlet, and Leopold Bloom, who has an unfaithful wife and somewhat acts as a surrogate father to Stephen. Additional references to Hamlet include Stephen being seemingly supplanted by Buck Mulligan (similar to how Hamlet’s path to the throne is blocked by Claudius), and the tentative father-son relationship between Stephen and Bloom, which may subtly reference Hamlet’s uneasy relationship with Claudius. These literary allusions serve as points of comparison or contrast, helping to deepen the understanding of the present text. The novel delves into themes of a son’s yearning for a father, a motif originally introduced by Homer and further explored in Hamlet. Joyce plays with ideas of paternity and legacy, examining the forces that disrupt context and inheritance. By situating his novel within a classical framework and extending it to include Shakespeare’s play, along with numerous other texts, both well-known and obscure, Joyce places his work within a literary tradition that it both emerges from and seeks to redefine. His underlying assumption is that the reader is as well-read as he is.

• 1900s: In 1904, James Joyce resides in a rented Martello Tower, one of several small defensive forts constructed along Dublin Bay to protect against potential attacks by Napoleon.

  Today: The Martello Tower now houses the James Joyce Museum, attracting tourists eager to follow the paths of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom.

• 1900s: Ireland is predominantly Catholic, with 85 percent of its population practicing the faith devoutly.

  Today: Although still mainly Catholic, Ireland is becoming more secular. Increasing numbers of people are ignoring the Catholic Church's prohibitions on reproductive matters.

1900s: While specific data on Irish alcohol consumption are unavailable, pubs serve as daily gathering spots where locals drink, discuss politics and community issues, and enjoy music together.

Today: From 1992 to 2002, estimates indicate that Ireland's alcohol consumption rate is among the highest in Europe, averaging 14.2 liters per adult annually.

An abridged audiobook of Ulysses, narrated by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, was released by Naxos in 1995. The entire recording spans five hours across four cassettes.

Joseph Strick directed a film adaptation of Ulysses in 1967, featuring Milo O'Shea as Leopold Bloom. As of 2007, this film was available on DVD.

In 2006, Odyssey Pictures released Bloom: All of Life in One Extraordinary Day, a film directed by Sean Walsh with Stephen Rea portraying Leopold Bloom.

Sources
Bell, Robert H., “Bloomsday at 100,” in Commonweal, Vol. 131, No. 10, May 21, 2004, pp. 15–17.

Connolly, Cyril, “Joyce Remembered,” in New Statesman, Vol. 128, No. 4464, November 29, 1999, p. 55.

Delaney, Frank, James Joyce’s Odyssey: A Guide to the Dublin of “Ulysses”, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981, pp. 9, 10, 18, 21, 89, 166, 176.

Ellmann, Richard, Ulysses on the Liffey, Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. xi, xiii, xvii.

Gifford, Don, and Robert J. Seidman, “Ulysses” Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, University of California Press, 1988, p. 16.

Hederman, Mark Patrick, “Bloomsday at 100,” in Commonweal, Vol. 131, No. 10, May 21, 2004, pp. 17–18.

Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature, Macmillan, 1986, p. 484.

Joyce, James, Ulysses, Vintage Books, 1990.

“Pull Out His Eyes, Apologize: James Joyce and His Interpreters,” in Economist, Vol. 322, No. 7742, January 18, 1992, p. 91.

Schwarz, Daniel R., “Joyce’s Schema for Ulysses,” in Reading Joyce’s “Ulysses”, St. Martin’s Press, 1987, pp. 277–80.

Wilson, Edmund, Review of Ulysses, in New Republic, July 5, 1922, http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=classic&s=Wilson070522 (accessed July 27, 2006).

Further Reading
Bulson, Eric, James Joyce: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2006. This introduction provides essential information to help beginners understand Joyce’s works.

Emig, Rainer, ed., “Ulysses”: James Joyce, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. This compilation of recent essays offers an overview of scholarship on Joyce’s novel and the varied interpretations it has inspired. Theoretical approaches covered include gender studies and deconstruction.

Homer, Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, Penguin Group, 2006. Fagles’ modern translation of Homer’s epic about Odysseus’s journey home makes it an ideal choice for first-time readers.

Kertész, Imre, Kaddish for a Child Not Born, translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson, Northwestern University Press, 1997. This novel, written as a continuous interior monologue, follows a Holocaust survivor as he reflects on his past, childhood, failed marriage, and his decision not to have children.

Benstock, Bernard, ed. Critical Essays on James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989. Contains a cross-section of criticism from the early to the more recent. Special emphasis is given to the “Nausicaa” episode.

Ellman, Richard. James Joyce. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Widely considered the finest literary biography of the twentieth century. Contains extensive discussion and analysis of Ulysses. Highly recommended.

Gilbert, Stuart. James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” New York: Vintage Books, 1955. Still highly valuable. Covers the novel chapter by chapter; discusses in useful outlines many of the schemata underlying the novel. A good starting point.

Gillespie, Michael Patrick, and Paula F. Gillespie. Recent Criticism of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: An Analytical Review. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000. A survey of, with commentary on, Ulysses scholarship, especially since 1970.

Kenner, Hugh. “Ulysses”: A Study. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. A substantial contribution from a preeminent literary critic; discusses the plot of the novel thoroughly. Equally useful for the beginning or the repeat reader. Bibliography, appendices.

Thornton, Weldon. Voices and Values in Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. An anti-relativistic study of the novel.

Wilson, Edmund. Axel’s Castle: A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931. Discusses modernist writers. The chapter on Joyce contains an excellent summary of Ulysses. Places Joyce’s artistic and technical achievement in a historical context.