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Article: Bloomsday at 100: two reflections on James Joyce's legacy.
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- May 21, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Bloomsday, June 16, 1904, is the day anatomized, commemorated, and celebrated in James Joyce's Ulysses. Striking testimony to the enduring power of Ulysses is that we mark not the birth of its author or the publication of the book but the imagined day of the fiction. Ulysses has inspired a holiday to rival St. Patrick's Day. Joyce's vision of Dublin on June 16, 1904, is so compelling that it has entered our consciousness, become part of what we feel and know, remember, and imagine.
Once banned, often excoriated, still dauntingly difficult, Ulysses has become the canonical twentieth-century novel. Readers continue to be exhilarated, nettled, and perplexed by it. ...