James Joyce: Works, Contexts, Impact

Since its original publication in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses has not merely puzzled and perplexed readers, but also dazzled and delighted them.

In this lecture series, Joyceans from across the globe will join speakers from the UZH English Department and the Zurich James Joyce Foundation to celebrate the novel’s centenary and to place Joyce’s modernist masterpiece in its literary and historical context. The talks, aimed at students as well as members of the general public, will introduce the audience to Joyce’s life (e.g. his time in Zurich), his major works (with Ulysses as the series’ centerpiece), and his place in literary and cultural history (e.g. Joyce’s relation to the avantgarde or his afterlife on the big screen).

Throughout the series, the speakers will strive to combine scholarly expertise with readerly enthusiasm: a sequence of love lectures to a veritable wizard of wordplay, whose boundless affection for his characters’ quotidian quests forms the basis of a literary adventure quite unlike any other.