Ulysses: James Joyce (Penguin Modern Classics)

Ulysses: James Joyce (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Declan Kiberd (Introduction), Declan Kiberd (Introduction), James Joyce (Author)

Synopsis

A modernist novel of supreme stylistic innovation, James Joyce's "Ulysses" is the towering achievement of twentieth century literature. This "Penguin Modern Classics" edition includes an introduction by Declan Kiberd. For Joyce, literature 'is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man'. Written between 1914 and 1921, "Ulysses" has survived bowdlerization, legal action and bitter controversy. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. An undisputed modernist classic, its ceaseless verbal inventiveness and astonishingly wide-ranging allusions confirm its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. Declan Kilberd says in his introduction that "Ulysses" is 'an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies. It holds a mirror up to the colonial capital that was Dublin on 16 June 1904, but it also offers redemptive glimpses of a future world which might be made over in terms of those utopian moments.' This edition is the standard Random House/Bodley Head text that first appeared in 1960. James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake". He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter's mental illness. If you enjoyed "Ulysses", you might enjoy Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway", also available in Penguin Classics. "Everybody knows now that "Ulysses" is the greatest novel of the twentieth century". (Anthony Burgess, "Observer").

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 1040
Edition: 1
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 30 Mar 2000

ISBN 10: 0141182806
ISBN 13: 9780141182803
Prizes: Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.

Author Bio
James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten children in a family which, after brief prosperity, collapsed into poverty. He was none the less educated at the best Jesuit schools and then at University College, Dublin, and displayed considerable academic and literary ability. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). James Joyce died in Zurich, on 13 January 1941.