Jacob’s Room

by Pericles Lewis Virginia Woolf‘s novel Jacob’s Room (1922) concerns the difficulty, especially for his mother, of making posthumous sense of the life of Jacob Flanders, a young man who dies in the first world war. (Flanders was a region of Belgium where the British sustained many of their heaviest casualties). The novel follows Jacob’s… Continue Reading Jacob’s Room

Marcel Proust

Biography by Elyse Graham 1: What Is this Ecstasy? Born in a Paris suburb in 1871, Proust grew up in cloistered privilege. His father was a celebrated physician, a self-made man who never understood his son’s dreamy indolence and suspected that his illnesses were psychosomatic. His mother, who fussed over his health and presided over his cultural… Continue Reading Marcel Proust

“Bliss” and “The Garden Party”

by Ruth Gilligan Born in 1888 into a socially prominent New Zealand family, Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp began writing at an early age, publishing short stories in her high school magazine from as young as ten. At the age of fifteen, she moved to London and, despite a brief return to her homeland, spent the rest… Continue Reading “Bliss” and “The Garden Party”

Woolf’s Reading of Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922-1941

by James Heffernan, Dartmouth College This page is a continuation of Woolf’s Reading of Joyce’s Ulysses, 1918-1920 In February of 1922, just after James Joyce‘s Ulysses appeared, Virginia Woolf wrote to her sister Vanessa, who was then in Paris: “for Gods sake make friends with Joyce. I particularly want to know what he’s like.”[1] So… Continue Reading Woolf’s Reading of Joyce’s Ulysses, 1922-1941

“Penelope”

by Noah Warren & Jay Dockendorf Protasis With its mannered dialectical mode, “Ithaca” can be read as a self-conscious attempt to explain, or rationalize, ‘universal’ themes such as the differences and similarities of perception, the cosmos, water, and adultery. Yet at its heels comes “Penelope.” The episode famously lacks punctuation; it substitutes instead eight massive… Continue Reading “Penelope”

“Ithaca”

by Aleksandar Stevic “Ithaca” is the penultimate chapter of Joyce‘s Ulysses, located between “Eumaeus” and Molly’s monologue in “Penelope”. According to Joyce’s letters, it is also the last chapter of the book to be completed, months after “Penelope” (Letters, 52). The chapter follows Stephen and Bloom on their way to Bloom’s house, the conversation they… Continue Reading “Ithaca”

“Eumaeus”

by Ally Findley Events and Narration The “Eumaeus” episode of Ulysses directly follows the surreal nightmarescape of “Circe.” This episode is also the beginning of the third and final section of Ulysses. In this episode, Bloom rescues Stephen from getting into a fight with a British officer and safely escorts him out of Dublin’s Nighttown,… Continue Reading “Eumaeus”

“Circe”

by Jacob Albert, Olivia Coates, and Matthew Gerken In the fifteenth episode of Ulysses, “Circe,” James Joyce experiments with a dramatic technique he called hallucination. The play-like form and structure of the episode leave no room for anything interior or internal. Yet the performance allows for the utter unwinding of reality and common sense. Household… Continue Reading “Circe”

“The Oxen of the Sun”

By Daniel Jordan Introduction “I think this episode might also have been called Hades for the reading of it is like being taken the rounds of hell.” –Harriet Shaw Weaver1 The Oxen of the Sun is commonly known as the most difficult episode of James Joyce‘s Ulysses, and the challenges it presents appear most immediately… Continue Reading “The Oxen of the Sun”

“Nausicaa”

by Simone McCarthy Homeric Parallels Episode 13 of James Joyce’s Ulysses parallels Book VI of The Odyssey in which Odysseus finally reaches land after having drifted at sea for twenty days, following his leave from Calypso’s Island of Ogygia. At the end of Book V, finally in sight of land, Odysseus loses his hand-made raft… Continue Reading “Nausicaa”