The Complete James Joyce (Pynch)

Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an

ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus

(Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyssey (e.g., the

correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope,

and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate June

16 as Bloomsday.

Ulysses totals about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words

(including proper names, plurals and various verb tenses), divided into 18

"episodes". Since publication, the book attracted controversy and scrutiny,

ranging from early obscenity trials to protracted textual "Joyce Wars."

Ulysses' stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and

experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich

characterisations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in

the Modernist pantheon. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses first on

its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.