Because “in using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity,” he tried to renew one of the western world’s ancient foundational stories for our time. (The quote comes from T. S. Eliot.)
Because he was a writer so great that he succeeded.
Because what he achieved was a comedy as profound as Dante’s – but (unlike Dante’s) a comedy that’s also very funny.
You’ll see. Nobody emerges from the Joyce experience ungrateful.
Texts, at the university bookstore:
James Joyce, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses
Don Gifford, “Ulysses” Annotated
Four five-page papers, midterm and final.