Annotations to James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses is filled with all sorts of references that can get in the way of many of its readers. This volume, with over 12,000 individual annotations (and more than double the word count of Ulysses itself), explains these references and allusions in a clear and compact manner and is designed to be accessible to novices and scholars alike.

The annotations cover the full range of information referenced in Ulysses: a vast array of literary allusions, such as Shakespeare, Aristotle, Dante, Aquinas, slang from various eras and areas, foreign language words and phrases, Hiberno-English expressions, Catholic ritual and theology, Irish histories, Theosophy, Freemasonry, cricket, astronomy, fashion, boxing, heraldry, the symbolism of tattoos, horse racing, advertising slogans, nursery rhymes, superstitions, music-hall songs, references to Dublin topography precise enough for a city directory, and much more besides.

The annotations reflect the latest scholarship and have been thoroughly reviewed by an international team of experts. They are designed to be accessible to first-time readers and college students and will also serve as a resource for Joycean specialists. The volume includes contemporaneous maps of Dublin to illustrate the cityscape’s relevance to Joyce’s novel. Unlike previous volumes of annotations, almost every note includes documentation about sources.

Sam Slote, Professor, Trinity College, Dublin, Marc A. Mamigonian, Director of Academic Affairs, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, John Turner, Content Editor, Royal Bank of Canada

Like the eponymous Joyce scholar of the novel The Death of a Joyce Scholar, Sam Slote is a Professor at Trinity College Dublin and lives in Dublin. He is the author of Joyce’s Nietzschean Ethics (Palgrave, 2013) and is the co-editor, with Luca Crispi, of How Joyce Wrote ’Finnegans Wake’ (Wisconsin, 2007). In addition to Joyce and Beckett, he has written on Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond Queneau, Antonin Artaud, Dante, MallarmÃ(c), and Elvis.

Marc A. Mamigonian is the Director of Academic Affairs of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research. He has served as the editor of the Journal of Armenian Studies and the volume The Armenians of New England (Armenian Heritage Press, 2004), and is the co-author of annotations to Joyce’s Stephen Hero (James Joyce Quarterly, 40.3 [2003], with John Turner), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Alma Classics, 2014; with John N. Turner) and Ulysses (Alma Classics, 2015, with John Turner and Sam Slote). His work has appeared in the James Joyce Quarterly, Genocide Studies, International, Armenian Review, and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, and elsewhere.

John Turner holds a Ph.D. in English from Brandeis University. His articles on Joyce have been published by the James Joyce Quarterly and Philosophy and Literature. Together with Marc A. Mamigonian, he is co-author of annotations to Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Alma Classics, 2015). He works in communications in Boston, Mass.