English 458: James Joyce's Dublin
	Professor Robert Dunne 318 Willard Hall 832-2756 dunne@ccsu.edu

Required Texts:
Joyce, Ulysses (Random House 1961 ed.)
Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Chaosmus: The Middle Ages of James Joyce

Recommended Reading:
Joyce, Dubliners
Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Harry Blamires, The Bloomsday Book (on Reserve)
Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (on Reserve)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (on Reserve)
Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated: Notes for Joyce's Ulysses (on Reserve)
Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses
Oliver St. John Gogarty, It Isn't This Time of Year at All! (May be located in Dublin bookstores)
William Noon, SJ, Joyce and Aquinas
 

OBJECTIVES
Although he lived outside of Ireland for most of his life, James Joyce never left the country out of his works.  Early in his life, he described his native city as "dear, dirty, Dublin," and its inhabitants as "the most hopeless, useless and inconsistent race of charlatans I have ever come across."  Later in life, however, he told a compatriot writer, "I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.  In the particular is contained the universal."

This study-abroad course will focus on an intensive study of Joyce's Ulysses and provide you with the opportunity of visiting Dublin, where many of the turn-of-the-century settings in the novel still survive.  The novel will be situated in its biographical and historical context and examined from a variety of theoretical approaches.  You will be expected to have some background in Joyce's other major works, though selections from such works as Dubliners and A Portrait will also be referred to.  After about two weeks of classroom study at CCSU, we will spend two weeks in Dublin, visiting significant sites related to the novel, its author, and the Irish Literary Revival which thrived during the first half of this century.  Depending on time and expenses, additional excursions from Dublin, such as Galway and the Aran Islands, may be planned.  The focal point of this study abroad will be participation in the many activities commemorating Bloomsday, June 16, the day on which the novel takes place.

Ulysses is probably the most significant literary work written in the twentieth century.  According to the most recent edition of the MLA Bibliography, over 1,700 scholarly works have been written on this work alone since 1963.  An exemplar of Modernism, the work is daunting, demanding, intimidating, vexing, rewarding, and frequently fun to read.  Two weeks of classroom study will not do it justice; at best, by the end of these two weeks I want you to have at least a general understanding of the work and some knowledge of what Joyce was trying to do in it.  Working within such time constraints, our reading the book as a collective experience may prove most advantageous; in other words, although I expect that no one will finish the class having mastered the entire book, I do intend that, individually, you will have a fairly solid grasp of at least one episode, and so collectively all of us may gain some insights from each other on the rest of the book.

The purpose of the Dublin segment of the course is to immerse you in the milieu of Ulysses.  As difficult and challenging as the book is, I am sure that it will come alive in many eye-opening and unplanned ways by your immersion into Irish culture.  The richness of the Irish vernacular and the humor that pervade the book will, I hope, be vivified by your experience in Dublin.  Our time in Dublin will NOT be rigidly organized.  There will be required group meetings and tours, but you will also have ample opportunity to explore Dublin and its environs on your own or in informal groups.  I will try to arrange tours of places outside of Dublin, as warranted by time, interest, and personal finances.  I strongly recommend that you acquire a tour book on Dublin and/or Ireland before we depart to familiarize yourself with all things Irish.

Assignments:
During the classroom portion of the course I will have you select and recite (not from memory) 15-25 lines from any episode in the book.  I would like you to select this passage based on any number of factors:  is it specially  representative of Irish vernacular? profound? humorous? descriptive? satirical? scatological?  In other words, I want you to select a passage that you find personally striking.  In addition, by our first class meeting, I would like you to answer the attached questionnaire which I will refer to in assigning you to "cover" an episode from the book.  You will ultimately be responsible for making a presentation on that episode at some point during our stay in Dublin.  You will also keep a journal in which you will respond to questions about Joyce's life, the novel's content, and its Dublin locales.  Finally, you will write a 15-page research paper on some aspect of the book.