Penelope Bloom

Dartmouth's Professor James A. W. Heffernan maps the brilliance, passion, humanity, and humor of James Joyce's modern Odyssey in this 24-lecture series. Joyce's great novel Ulysses is a big, richly imagined, and intricately organized book with a huge reputation. T. S. Eliot, bowled over by Joyce's brilliant manipulation of a continuous parallel between ancient myth and modern life, called it "the most important expression which the present age has found … [one] to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape." Ulysses depicts a world that is as fully conceived and vibrant as anything in Homer or Shakespeare. It has been delighting and puzzling readers since it was first published on Joyce's 40th birthday, February 2, 1922.