16 June 2004. Dublin.

June 16th, 2004 | by aobaoill |

Bloomsday centenary.
Bloomsday – celebrated since the 1960s in Dublin – marks the day in which James Joyce’s Ulysses is set: June 16th, 1904. Joyce picked the date to celebrate the first day he ‘stepped out’ with his future wife, Nora Barnacle of Galway. However, for fans of the book the day is more commonly associated with the experiences of Leopold Bloom (hence Bloomsday) and Stephen Dedalus. Filled with symbolic references – most obviously to the Illiad – the text uses a variety of narrative styles, culminating in the masterful ‘Molly Bloom soliloquy’

  1. 5 Responses to “16 June 2004. Dublin.”

  2. By Paul Frommer on Sep 5, 2003 | Reply

    Um . . . aren’t the “symbolic references” in Ulysses most obviously to the Odyssey, not the Iliad?
    🙂
    prf

  3. By Andrew Ó Baoill on Sep 5, 2003 | Reply

    My bad. You are of course right. I got distracted – the point I was trying to make was that there are references to matters other than Greek myth. However, the book does of course mirror the Odyssey, the journey back following Troy.

  4. By angela on Oct 6, 2003 | Reply

    Right… so is anyone going this year? I’m thinking about it.

  5. By Joseph Masheck on Apr 25, 2004 | Reply

    Indeed—about the Iliad, which of course has only one ‘l.’ Not to worry: it is said that when Matisse illustrated the great novel he didn’t even notice that it wasn’t just Homer in English!

  6. By des on May 18, 2004 | Reply

    See you in Dublin on Bloomsday – Actually its the 50th Bloomsday celebration; the first one was in 1954, involving Patrick Kavanagh,Briain O Nolan, John Ryan, Anthony Cronin ( still, happily, ‘on the go’) and a dentist called Tom Joyce

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