Modernism and Myth. This seminar will explore the uses of myth in James Joyce and modernist aesthetics. Most of the quarter will be devoted to a parallel reading of Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses, the summit of literary modernism. We’ll test T. S. Eliot’s famous dictum that Joyce’s method is “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.” After a brief look at Joyce’s applications of Ovid in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we’ll tackle Ulysses one episode at a time, tracking the progressive weaving and unweaving of sense. Discussions will address the book’s Irish and European contexts and influences, and Joyce's exuberant transvaluations of all novelistic values (narrative devices, generic conventions, topics, perspectives, styles and humors). Texts: Lattimore’s translation of the Odyssey (Harper Perennial Classics); Ulysses: The Corrected Text, ed. by Hans Walter Gabler; any edition of A Portrait of the Artist.

Requirements and Grading: attendance, weekly assignments, participation in one team-presentation (40% of final grade), and a course project involving independent research and resulting in a 9-10 page final paper (60% of final grade). Team-job and course project may focus on the same material. Please note: Ulysses is a delightful but very demanding book: contact instructor in person to receive reading recommendations for the summer.