Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses for Pleasure

Instructor: Terry Fitzpatrick
March 25, 26, 28, 29
1-3 p.m.

This course will focus on how to “read” Joyce’s multilayered masterpiece for the same kinds of pleasures with which we read other novels (language, plot, story, character, suspense, love, hate, anxiety and ending). Because Ulysses was so radically different from previous novels, we need to let it show us how to experience these usual pleasures (just as people learned how to “read” impressionist and cubist paintings). In the end, however, it’s a simple love story. And we all do love a good love story, even when Joyce tells it “slant” (as Emily Dickinson recommended).

Dr. Terry Fitzpatrick was born in Montana and has a BA from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. As a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, he taught literature and helped create an interdisciplinary program in literature, history and philosophy.