The Dublin Helix
The Life of Language in Joyce's Ulysses
Will be published approx. on 12. January 2027
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-0-8130-8190-8 (ISBN)
Description
Reading James Joyce's Ulysses through the lens of puzzles and language play
Embracing improbable and wildly anachronistic connections, Sebastian Knowles has devised an approach to reading Ulysses that makes its author less of a modernist and more of a prophet of contemporary science, literature, and critical thought.
The Dublin Helix is a puzzle book, taking as its method James Joyce's own playful manipulations of language and matching them with entertaining word searches, acrostics, and other enigmas. Knowles finds ways into Ulysses that have never before been imagined, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the structure for genetic material. Each chapter presents a puzzle, and each solution completes a little more of the picture of the vital language of the modern classic. By the end, the strange and wonderful text that is Joyce's Ulysses may be finally pieced together.
Both entertainment and scholarship, the book presents Joyce scholars with much that is new, a great deal that is controversial, and an unusual willingness to allow for misreadings and bogus statements. With appendixes that can make inviting handouts (originally developed for Knowles's own students), the book also offers an excellent introduction to a Ulysses course.
Embracing improbable and wildly anachronistic connections, Sebastian Knowles has devised an approach to reading Ulysses that makes its author less of a modernist and more of a prophet of contemporary science, literature, and critical thought.
The Dublin Helix is a puzzle book, taking as its method James Joyce's own playful manipulations of language and matching them with entertaining word searches, acrostics, and other enigmas. Knowles finds ways into Ulysses that have never before been imagined, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the structure for genetic material. Each chapter presents a puzzle, and each solution completes a little more of the picture of the vital language of the modern classic. By the end, the strange and wonderful text that is Joyce's Ulysses may be finally pieced together.
Both entertainment and scholarship, the book presents Joyce scholars with much that is new, a great deal that is controversial, and an unusual willingness to allow for misreadings and bogus statements. With appendixes that can make inviting handouts (originally developed for Knowles's own students), the book also offers an excellent introduction to a Ulysses course.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Florida
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
13 illustrations - 13 b/w illus., 4 appendices, notes, works cited, index - 13 Illustrations, black and white - Index
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8130-8190-8 (9780813081908)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sebastian D. G. Knowles, professor emeritus of English at Ohio State University, is the editor of Bronze by Gold: The Music of Joyce, the coauthor of An Annotated Bibliography of a Decade of T. S. Eliot Criticism, and the author of A Purgatorial Flame, a study of the literature of World War II.