James Joyce's Ulysses

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The 'key' to Ulysses, as M. Valery Larbaud has remarked, is plain to see on its title-page: the name 'ulysses'. It is in the story of the Odyssey that we may find a clue to the obscurities in this modern epic of a Dublin day. And the justification for this approximation of the ancient to the modem is founded on mysticism, 'upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood', like the Church, like all the theories that, hot for certainties, sapient man has concocted to solve the scheme of things. In writing this study I have not hesitated to emphasize the importance of the Homeric analogies and to explore certain remote hinterlands of esoteric thought. The analogy-hunter, like the cryptogrammatist dissecting a Shakespearian text, is liable to cut a somewhat ridiculous figure, if he let his hobby run away with him. But it is a far cry from Ithaca to Dublin, from the wisdom of the East to the practical reason of the West, and, if some of my analogies seem far-fetched, they are, I make bold to say, none the less apposite for that. Moreover, a reader of Ulysses needs to bear in mind that, though it is in no sense a parody of the Odyssey.