James Joyce's Ulysses

Q. Why is Ulysses in the dock again

A. Macmillan, the publishers of what has been described as a 'reader friendly' edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, have been taken to court by the trustees of Joyce's estate over copyright infringement. The 1997 edition was described by the estate's lawyer as having been 'passed off as something which it is not', that is one which, according to the editor, Danis Rose, was the first version to make sense to the reader.

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Q. But surely the book's no longer in copyright

A. Joyce died in 1941, so the copyright to the original edition of the book, first published in 1922, had indeed expired in 1991, 50 years after his death. However, Joyce's unused manuscript material, from which Rose took his alterations, was not published until 1977 and is thus still under copyright protection. Joyce's estate is claiming Macmillan had no licence to use the material.

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Q. What sort of things has the editor tampered with

A. Rose altered some of the author's original punctuation, spelling and place names, claiming, at the time of publication, that 'Joyce sought lucidity. He did not try to make his work foggy and obscure. Yet previous editions force the reader to make textual decisions throughout...This text is cleaner, lighter and less threatening. It is meaningful rather than obscure and the nuances there are those Joyce intended.'

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Q. Any examples

A. He replaced 'dressinggown' with 'dressing gown' and altered a description of Shakespeare as 'greyedauburn' to 'greyed auburn'. He also performed what he described as 'invasive surgery' on details he feels Joyce got wrong. One example is the change from 'the Sundam Trench of the Pacific, exceeding 8000 fathoms' being changed to 'its unplumbed profundity in the Marianne Trench of the Pacific, exceeding 6000 fathoms'. Rose has pointed out that the Sundam Trench had not been measured by 1904 - the year the action in the book takes place - but had by the time Joyce wrote the words in 1921.

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Q. What was the outcome of the trial

A. The ruling is due some time in December 2001. Watch this space.

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Q. So, what was the book sent down for last time

A. Obscenity - specifically its sexually explicit nature and 'vulgar' language. It was first published in serial form in the New York-based literary magazine The Little Review starting in 1918. Several years later, in 1921, the serialised form of the book was first seized and challenged in a New York court The court ruled against magazine.

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The controversy surrounding the book did not end with its first complete publication in Paris in 1922. This time, instead of simply taking the book to court, New York postal officials seized and burned 500 copies under the Comstock Law of 1873. (Officially known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, this law banned the mailing of 'lewd', 'indecent', 'filthy' or 'obscene' materials. These laws, while no longer enforced, remain for the most part on in place today.)

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In 1934 an appeal court overturned the ruling, with the judge saying that it was 'not pornographic... We think Ulysses is a book of originality and sincerity of treatment, and that it has not the effect of promoting lust.' In 1936 the novel was finally legalised in the UK.

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Q. What about the book

A. Ulysses is widely considered one of the most important books of the 20th century. A masterpiece of modernist literature, Ulysses uses the structure of Homer's Odyssey as a contrast to the lives of the Dublin working class. The entire 700-plus-page work takes place during Dublin's 'dailiest day possible', Thursday 16 June 1904, around the character Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertisement canvasser.

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Q. Presumably the book's reputation wasn't harmed by all this fuss

A. Hardly. In fact it raised what might otherwise have remained an obscure avant-garde text to legendary status. Joyce joked that Ulysses should 'give Universities something to work on well into the next century'. Championed by the cream of the literary �lite - in particular figures such as Ezra Pound, who secured the serialisation rights for The Little Review, and Sylvia Beach, owner of the celebrated Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris and who first published it in book form - the book couldn't fail but draw attention to itself. It pretty much single-handedly introduced stream of consciousness techniques to the modern literary canon and, along with the publication in the same year of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, defined modernism and became the icon of a new literary era.

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See also the articles on stream of consciousness, Ian Brady and banned books

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For more on Arts & Literature click here

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By Simon Smith

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