An Odyssey through the streets of the fair city of Dublin, retracing the footsteps of Leopold Bloom, James Joyces most famous literary character from the equally acclaimed novel, Ulysses.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on the 22nd of February 1882 to John and Mary Jane Joyce in Rathgar, Dublin. This tour will take you on an epic adventure through the city following Leopold Bloom’s day in Joyce’s novel, Ulysses.
Bloomsday is traditionally celebrated on the 16th of June – the date that Joyces character, Leopold Bloom, makes his way across Dublin. This date was specifically chosen by Joyce and correlates with his first date with Nora Barnacle, who he later married in 1904.
Ulysses centers around two protagonists, Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser, and Stephen Dedalus, a young writer. Joyce commenced writing Ulysses in 1914 and completed it in 1921.
Joyce found it difficult to secure a publisher due to certain themes and subject matters. After much controversy surrounding the publication, Ulysses was eventually published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her bookstore, Shakespeare & Company on Rive Gauche, on the Parisian left bank.
Today Ulysses is hailed as one of the most important novels of the 20th century. In 1998 it was ranked number one on the list of One hundred best English Language novels of the 20th century, at the Modern Library.
Ulysses is a parody of Homers epic poem, The Odyssey, with Blooms personal odyssey across the city of Dublin mimicking that of Homer’s hero, Odysseus. Similarities between the two works lie within the characters and events. Leopold Bloom can be compared to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus. Ulysses has eighteen chapters and every one has a theme connecting the characters to those of The Odyssey. Each chapter is set at a certain time throughout the day, charting Blooms footsteps down to the last hour, beginning at 8am and concluding after 2am the following morning.
This Bloomsday Tour will take you to several famous spots in the city that Joyce wrote about in the book.
All images courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.