Joyce's Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in Ulysses: Becoming the Blooms

This book is both a study of how James Joyce created two of the most iconic characters in literature―Leopold Bloom and Marion Tweedy Bloom―as well as a history of the genesis of Ulysses. From a genetic critical perspective, it explores the conception and evolution of the Blooms as fictional characters in the work's wide range of surviving notes and manuscripts. At the same time, it also chronicles the production of Ulysses from 1917 to its first edition in 1922 and beyond. Based on decades of research, it is an original engagement with the textual archive of Ulysses, including the exciting, recently-discovered manuscripts now in the National Library of Ireland.

Luca Crispi excavates the raw material and examines the creative processes Joyce deployed in the construction of the Blooms and so the writing of Ulysses. Framed by a contextual introduction and four bibliographical appendices, the seven main chapters are a critical investigation of the fictional events and memories that constitute the 'lives' of the Blooms. Thereby, it is also a commentary on Joyce's conception of Ulysses more generally. Crispi analyzes how the stories in the published book achieved their final form and discloses previously unexamined versions of them for everyone who enjoys reading Ulysses.

This book demonstrates the various ways in which specialist textual work on the genesis of Ulysses directly intersects with other critical and interpretive readings. This volume is a behind-the-scenes guide to the creation of one of the most important books ever written.

Luca Crispi, Lecturer in Joyce Studies and Modernism, University College Dublin

Dr Luca Crispi teaches on the Anglo-Irish as well as the Modern and Contemporary Literature MA programmes at University College Dublin. He is founding co-editor of the Dublin James Joyce Journal and Associate Director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School. He was contributing co-editor of How Joyce Wrote 'Finnegans Wake': A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide. Previously, Crispi was James Joyce and W.B. Yeats Research Scholar at the National Library of Ireland and co-curator of the exhibitions 'James Joyce and Ulysses at the National Library of Ireland' and 'Yeats: The Life and Works of W.B. Yeats', and was the James Joyce Scholar in Residence, the Poetry Collection, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.