Trip McCrossin (Rutgers University - New Brunswick)
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James Joyce’s Ulysses, “a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape,” T.S. Eliot wrote, turns one hundred in 2022. Its centenary is an occasion to explore it anew, both in its own right, and in terms of its enduring influence and importance.

James Joyce’s Ulysses first appeared in its entirety on February 2, 2022, on the occasion of his fortieth birthday. In this its centenary, as we naturally celebrate its remarkable literary achievement, we just as naturally take note, given the state of the world a hundred years on, of the circumstances of its composition and earlier appearance. The story, that is, an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom, set a decade before the outbreak of World War One, reflecting Homer’s depiction in the Odyssey of the extraordinary decade in the life of Odysseus as he makes his perilous way home in the wake of the Trojan War, unfolds in eighteen episodes, which Joyce drafts sequentially from November of 1917 through October of 1921, the first eight over the course of the final year of war, the remainder during the first three years after armistice. All the more notable, the first thirteen and a portion of the fourteenth were serialized in The Little Review and The Egoist from March of 1918 through December of 1920, the first seven of these during the final eight months of the war. This session offers an occasion to explore Ulysses anew, both in its own right, and in terms of its enduring influence and importance, including perhaps what it may tell us about how to survive through to its bicentenary.