Ulysses Uncoveredis a comprehensive yet easy-to-read guide and commentary to James Joyce's great epic, Ulysses.
It gives a sufficiently detailed summary, one that is packed with incisive comment and surprising detail. In producing this book I set out to extract the core of the narrative, that is, I set out to highlight the lives of the people who lived in Dublin on that memorable day for Joyce, the 16th June 1904.
As you can see from the cover my name is Patrick Moloney. I am (since long ago!) a graduate from University College Dublin in the biological Sciences and, later from Trinity College, Dublin, in Computer Science. I've always had an interest in literature. And many years ago I took up the challenge of reading Joyce's tome. What thrilled me no end was to discover that my home village of Shanagoldenin Co. Limerick gets a not insignificant mention in Ulysses.
What surprised me especially is this: no commentator has given a reason for its inclusion. However within the pages of Ulysses Uncoveredyou will get a very plausible and acceptable explanation.
Ulysses Uncovered is chocker block filled with quirky explanations and comments - all of them accurate and sure. This is understandable. I have lived more than forty years in Dublin. I know the place and its people.
Trying to read Ulysseswithout some significant preparation and without some previous knowledge of Dublin and the social life of its people quickly becomes intimidating. During the last decades of the 19th century and at the start of the new 20th century a great Renaissance took place in Dublin and throughout Ireland. Many political, social, cultural, sporting, language groups and organisations emerged. And along with them a wonderful array of splendid personalities.
And, especially, it is necessary to appreciate that Ulyssesis a magnetic and magnificent literary opus, full of complexities and novel literary techniques.
This is where Ulysses Uncovered comes in. The purpose of the book is to carry the reader successfully through each of the eighteen episodes or chapters of Joyce's epic. In Ulysses UncoveredYou get the core of the narrative, you get pertinent commentary. Complexities are confronted and discussed. Explanations are given and opinions offered. Your thinking will be provoked in many ways and you will be helped to crystallise your own views and thoughts. ............................................................................
None of the other attempts to make Joyce’s complicated work understandable have taken your approach which is to take the reader through the pages of the book and explain, as well as the classical references, the local ones too. There are a good number of aids to Joyce’s Ulysses but I think this is the one that I so far find easiest to bring the reader close to what Joyce has done.
