English 177-2 - Winter, 2016

Study of an Individual Author

Topic: James Joyce

Class Information

Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 22765
Time: MWF 11:00-11:50
Location: 129 Wellman

Description

Around the year 2000, James Joyce's lengthy and difficult novel Ulysses finished first place in a number of polls that ranked "the most significant literary works of the Twentieth Century". Despite these accolades, many people-- including those who voted in these polls-- confessed or continue to confess their inability to read the novel due to its complexity. This course is, first of all, a beginner's introduction to perhaps the most famous "unread" book in the literary canon. After very quick considerations of Joyce's earlier works Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the majority of the quarter will be devoted to a slow and in-depth reading of Ulysses. Along the way, we will read additional brief works by figures such as W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Lady Gregory, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf in order to contextualize the novel within irish cultural history and within the emergence of literary modernism. The goal at all times, however, will be to understand as much of Ulysses as we can.

Grading

One short paper (4-5 pages), One term paper (10-12 pages), Final Exam, and frequent and productive class participation

Texts

James Joyce, Richard Ellmann
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Dubliners, James Joyce
Ulysses (1963 edition), James Joyce
Ulysses Annotated, Don Gifford