How To Read Ulysses

I had originally chosen to read Ulysses for my seminar course because I enjoy taking on the challenge of reading novels that are notoriously verbose. Growing up, I was the stereotypical bookworm whose primary reason for existing was to read. I read all the books that I could get my hands on, and I frequently abused my library card. Reading has been a lifelong passion of mine, and I was ecstatic when I found out I had the opportunity to do something I love for marks and discuss a challenging novel with people who potentially shared the same interests that I did.

Ulysses has a reputation for being a novel that is both extremely time-consuming and difficult to read. I decided that the best way to approach this novel would be to do my research

As I read the chapters, I began keeping a log of all the unfamiliar words, phrases, and possible intertextual references that Joyce made in a notebook. When I was done reading a chapter, I looked up the definitions for the words I wrote and make notes about all the probable literary references on the pages they appeared. After that, I would read through the chapter again and refer to all the footnotes I had made to see if they would help better my understanding of the text. Once I was finished reading the chapter the second time around, I did an online search for any in-depth analyses of the chapter I had just read, and see if my interpretation of the plot’s events was

From my footnotes and my research, I was able to formulate an understanding of what the text was saying at face value, but not so much after that. This was partly due to the fact that I was constantly scouring for obscure literary and cultural references instead of trying to make connections between what the author had experienced and what Stephen had experienced. As a result, I had to conduct additional research in order to understand what was going on during the Telemachus chapter and understand how Stephen’s perspective of Irish politics mirrors Joyce’s perspective of the Irish people. Similarly, I understood that in the Nestor chapter that Stephen perceives history was an unpleasant dream that he had to escape from. What I didn’t understand was ___. Through enough research, I was able to understand these chapters but it was only because I was able to understand what was going