In our class discussions we've covered the big picture of Ulysses, but the book rewards multiple rereadings. In fact, it really only comes to life upon the second, third, or fourth reading, because of all the themes in Joyce's novel, language - as a lens that exposes or obscures reality - is paramount. In your paper, I want you to reread the passages of your choosing, closely unraveling Joyce's stylistic experiments, allusions and echoes, puns, wordplay, etc. - and connecting Joyce's language to the larger themes. Unlike the Yeats paper, you do not have to situate your reading in relation to Joyce criticism. The focus of the paper is your reading of Ulysses. Although you should use some criticism, this should not be the source of your reading - just a reference point in conversation with you. Your paper should show your familiarity with the specifics of the novel - not the story and summary but the details. Three options:
1. Detailed reading of a certain section. You should try to have a fresh insight on the chapter, how it may be read, and how it fits into Joyce's scheme for the book. For ideas, look up any chapter and find the scholarly articles on Jstor: "Is Lestrygonians a weak Proteus?" "Penelope as a microcosm of the novel" "Gestation, Literary Paternity, and Death in Oxen of the Sun" I'm just making stuff up to make a point: you should have an interesting take on the chapter, and read the language closely.
2. Reading Joyce through extra-textual sources. This is more literary-critical stuff. It can mean using biographical sources (such as Joyce's letters to his wife, brother, and friends) or literary sources ("Ulysses and Shakespeare's Minor Plays" "Bloom's World as a Mystery Cult" "Joyce and James Frazier's The Golden Bough" "Joyce and Thomas Mann: Stephen's Magic Mountain.") Again, I am making stuff up. Remember, Coleridge said: "No analogy is meant to stand on all four legs." He really liked those furniture metaphors. The virtue of reading the novel through an outside text is that it gives you a specific, and limited, task. Your reading should be more about Joyce than the other text, and should still maintain a focus on Joyce's language, as described above.
3. Exploring a motif in the novel. By a motif I mean something small. But since the novel is so systematic, there are no small subjects. I would discourage theme-based paper ideas, like "Joyce and Music" or "Joyce and Female Sexuality" or "Joyce and Religious Ritual" or "Time in Ulysses." While these are tempting, they would usually be too big to pull off in a 7-10 page paper (it can be longer). The most important thing is how you frame your topic... think of it as a study. So, motifs can be the most unexpected things in Ulysses: hats, the near East or Asia Minor, the Far East, flowers, correspondence, inanimate objects, objects as metaphoric weapons, clothing and color, eye color, minor characters' names, nonsense in Ulysses (this may be a bit big), Being a Borrower or a Lender in Ulysses, accounting, Brilliant Mistakes: Bloom and Science (also a little big), anonymous characters in Ulysses, Metempsychosis as a Literary Style, protean characters, murder in Ulysses, capital punishment in Ulysses, sequence of Homeric parallels, songs in Bloom's interior monologue (rather than "Songs in Ulysses). You get the idea - there could be countless motifs. Avoid obvious ones, like "pins." These motifs are not symbolic in the simple sense, but are still charged with meaning, since everything was conscious in Joyce.
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