Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses First Edition, 20th Anniversary

This is such a valuable resource for sifting through all the intricacies of Ulysses. Firstly, the book is of an extremely high quality. But secondly, and more importantly, it is filled to the brim with resources. Each chapter begins with a map of the relevant geographical area of Dublin with locations of the corresponding episode in Ulysses marked. In addition, there is a summary of the Homeric parallels of each episode, as well as an overview of the themes, stylistic devices, and more. Decimals worth the buy.

I highly recommend “Ulysses Annotated” to anyone who is reading James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses.” I would encourage you to first read Joyce’s novel without looking at these annotations. Afterwards, these annotations will help you discover much that you may have missed: literature; plays; songs; period events; allusions; allegory, mythology; languages; religions; politics; puzzles; Dublin streets and structures; Irish culture in 1904; etc. Reading “Ulysses” with these annotations could easily become a college course in and of itself.Facts of Life:- While the scope, depth, breadth, and contents of “Ulysses Annotated” are outstanding, the font size is quite too small. Please, please, please release a Kindle edition of this book so I can use larger (eye-saving) font.- The title of the book is deliberately misleading: This is not “Ulysses Annotated.” The title implies that a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses is included with annotations. In fact, the book is all annotations. “Ulysses Annotated” was written to specifically be used with “Ulysses: A Critical and Synoptic Edition.” You can find other editions for Kindle for free or a small fee. The book's proper title might be: "Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses."

Arrived on time. Properly packaged. Undamaged. No stress.

The internet is not enough. Use this book. Gifford is a trustable guide. These notes will help you avoid fantasy dead-ends not intended by Joyce. Knowing that a “costdrawer” is an appraiser, you can speed past internet posted essays on Daedalus family debts. Hippopotami do not wade the Irish coast waves. Nor do seahorses. Gifford's work was published in 1988 and from him you may imagine Bloom has a potato as talisman in his pocket (instead of a hole in his pocket). So the internet, more current, can be valuable as backup, used with discernment. Fundamentally, Gifford's notes aggregate in one place and simplify so you can enjoy Ulysses.He helps with backstory, referring you to characters appearing in The Dubliners, to events from Portrait. He is comprehensive in music lyrics with cast, playbill, and venue. He provides enough political history, Greek and Latin, Roman Catholic and Jewish explications. With Gifford in hand, puns and characterizations pop. If to Gifford's notes you add the Univ of Montana's excellent photo illustrated site, Ulysses will become very alive and make you happy in appreciation of each and every page.

It is well for the reader to understand this work for what it is: a very detailed footnotes to the Epic. The work delves into details that elude most readers in the way of references, contexts and illustrations of apparent compromises and inconsistencies made deliberately or not as the case might be, though we may never know James Joyces' mind to the full extent. Given the length of the work, many might expect an Annotated Novel, but the business is linked only to the notes of both the Modern work and the Classical Epic informing its structure.The editor is to be saluted on the great erudition that has been applied. Detailed notation of lyrics for many of the songs referenced might not be needed, but I am not sure that some readers may profit from these, even though I have found them a bit of a distraction.

Gifford's book is quite good in an scholarly sort of way. He has scrupulously researched the people, streets, shops, songs, literary allusions and other topographical features of both Dublin and Joyce's novel. But he falls short in providing the kind of "here's what's going on" explication and context this notoriously cryptic text cries out for. Ulysses Annotated cruises 50 feet above the ground, rather than taking the reader on the kinds of 500- and 5,000-foot swooping overviews to which Frank Delaney, of blessed memory, treated us in his erudite and thoroughly engaging "Re:Joyce" podcasts.Someone really needs to pick up where Delaney left off and produce a study of Ulysses that contextualizes the events of Bloomsday within the struggles of Irish history, Homer's epic, Joyce's ontology, his rebellion against religious faith, his literary theories, and the any other vast ideas that populate this masterpiece.

This is not the novel. This is a set of notes about the use of words in the novel. I love it. I am reading the novel with this book next to it in order to understand all of the elusive and highly idiosyncratic words and phrases. The maps are very helpful. By all means buy this book but you will ALSO need to obtain a copy of the actual novel. It is amusing to me to have to answer questions that are clearly about the novel before amazon allows me to write about the actual book I bought! It is definitely "full of surprises" but not in the sense of a novel being full of surprises. It is thoughtful but slow reading. It would take a true pedant to just read this wonderful book of annotations by itself. But if you love trivia it might be good that way too.

Essential for a deeper understanding of many references to Dublin history and geography, Shakespeare, classical philosophy, and more. Can't imagine reading Joyce's Ulysses with this excellent and thorough annotation.