James Joyce and the genesis of Ulysses

James Joyce scholars and the Irish tourist industry are both gearing up for 16 June, the centenary of the day on which Leopold Bloom, the hero of Ulysses, set out on his odyssey through the bars and brothels of Dublin. We can expect a deluge of new books and monographs to explain or ‘deconstruct’ Joyce’s abstruse version of the Homeric legend, told in a stream of consciousness babble of ancient and modern languages — which, as he rightly foresaw, would ‘keep the professors busy for centuries’.

The modern celebration of ‘Bloomsday’ started in the late 1940s with convivial Dublin literary men who wanted to honour a book still virtually prohibited because of its sexually explicit passages, especially the final monologue of Molly Bloom, the Penelope of the story. Soon ‘Bloomsday’ was adopted by the Irish Tourist Board, who also introduced conducted tours of Joyce’s favourite Dublin pubs and even a night-time display of passages from Ulysses picked out in pink electric lightbulbs.