On 5 June 1917 Joyce updates Ezra Pound on Ulysses. Ezra Pound had been doing a great deal over the previous year and a half to bring Joyce’s work to readers’ attention. With both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man finally in print, Joyce was now free to concentrate on […]
Tag archives: Hades
On this day…8 April
On 8 April 1848 Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti died. Donizetti (1797-1848) was one of the great composers of bel canto opera. Among his best-known works are L’Elisir d’amore (1832), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Lucrezia Borgia (1833), all of which are referred to in Joyce’s works. Born in Bergamo, Donizetti came to international attention […]
Leopold Bloom
The everyman hero of Ulysses, Joyce’s reworking of Odysseus. Bloom is 38 years old, Hungarian Jewish from his father (Rudolf Virag) and Irish Catholic from his mother (Ellen Higgins). He currently works as an ad canvasser for the newspaper The Freeman’s Journal, but he’s had other odd jobs throughout his life. He spends the day […]
Stephen Dedalus
Stephen Dedalus is the Telamachus character of Joyce’s Odyssey. He is best known for his moody brooding and lives mostly inside of his own head.