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Instructors: Dr. Dominik Wallerius
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.874.410
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
8,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: ELC 410
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Contents:
James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is often perceived as an intimidating text. It is certainly sitting on many bookshelves, but it has far less often actually been read, let alone been "understood".
Despite this, Ulysses is often ranked among the most important novels of the 20th century, maybe of all time. And yet the text is more often studied than enjoyed. There is good reason for this academic interest, as Joyce’s modernist masterpiece offers readers numerous angles from which it can be fruitfully read. Stream of consciousness, free indirect discourse, stylistic parody, modernist epic, these are only a few of the literary concepts that Ulysses has to offer for study. Similarly, psychoanalytical, New Critical, feminist, postcolonial and Marxist and many more theoeretical approaches have been tested against the novel's dense web of meanings. And certainly almost every major figure in literary and cultural theory has had a word or two (Jacques Derrida) to say about it or its author.
Still, Ulysses is for everyone, not just for a cultural elite. I'm convinced that, equipped with an interest in language and storytelling, everyone can equally study and enjoy the book. This seminar is an invitation to follow these two paths: we will study Ulysses from several theoretical angles, but we will also read it more “naively” with a pure enjoyment of how it functions as a narrative and what it does with (and to) the English language.
The seminar is therefore both an introduction the text and an appetizer for further, independent studies. We will look at select chapters/passages to get a grip on its infamous difficulty, and hopefully we will thereby dissipate some some of the fear that many readers feel when they hear the title.
Recommended reading list:
If you like to prepare in advance, I recommend browsing through books like
Harry Blamires’ The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide through Ulysses or
Terence Kileen’s Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses.
But this is optional. There is really no prior knowledge about Joyce required, as we will start from scratch.
However, you should refamiliarize yourself with the basic principles of narratology, that is, with key concepts of studying the novel. This means that you should have a firm grasp of key terms like focalisation, narrative voice, time, character, plot, setting, metaphor, symbol etc.
Additional information:
IMPORTANT Note: The Consulate General of Ireland in Frankfurt will generously provide the copies of Ulysses for this class.
So, there is no need to buy a copy yourself.
Equally, all further reading material will be provided by me via Moodle LMS.
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