Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. Partially serialised in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and a classic of the genre, having been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".

Ulysses chronicles the experiences of three Dubliners over the course of a single day, 16 June 1904 (which its fans now celebrate annually as Bloomsday). Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus. There are also correspondences with William Shakespeare's play Hamlet and with other literary, mythological and historical figures, including Jesus, Elijah, Moses, Dante Alighieri and Don Juan. Such themes as antisemitism, human sexuality, British rule in Ireland, Catholicism and Irish nationalism are treated in the context of early-20th-century Dublin. It is highly allusive and written in a variety of styles.

The writer Djuna Barnes quoted Joyce as saying, "The pity is ... the public will demand and find a moral in my book—or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it. ... In Ulysses I have recorded, simultaneously, what a man says, sees, thinks, and what such seeing, thinking, saying does, to what you Freudians call the subconscious."

According to the writer Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Its stream of consciousness technique, careful structuring and prose of an experimental nature—replete with puns, parodies, epiphanies and allusions—as well as its rich characterisation and broad humour have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works. Since its publication it has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted disputes about the authoritative version of the text.