Celebrating Bloomsday

June 16 is Bloomsday, a commemoration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere with particular focus on Joyce's novel Ulysses. It is called Bloomsday because the novel represents the thoughts, feelings, memories of the character Leopold Bloom on a single day – June 16, 1904. To celebrate the occasion, Joyce scholar (and Osher member) Jim Heffernan will, during the brunch, introduce and deliver brief passages from four different chapters of the novel. Discussion will follow.

James Heffernan, Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth, has published studies of literature ranging from Homer's Odyssey to the fiction of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. He has also recorded 24 lectures on Joyce's Ulysses for the Teaching Company.