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Summer Reading List (for Incoming Fall Ph.D. Students)


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Some Henrick Ibsen, some Elizabeth Gaskell, may dip into some of Robert Browning's more complicated poems. Probably a good deal of Hawthorne. Lots of Cambridge Companion Chapters, some articles from the journal Nineteenth-Century Literature, Mill's Utilitarianism, possibly some Strindberg. George Eliot's Felix Holt. John Ruskin's Praeterita. Probably Tourgenev's On the Eve, among other things.

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Ulysses by James Joyce.

Anyone have advice on approaching/ reading/ tackling/ wrestling with Ulysses?

I had a professor who told us that the first time you read it, pretend like you're in a hotel room, forgot a book and are desperate for reading material. Then you find this book called Ulysses in the nightstand. So that's what I did. I like this strategy because it releases you from the intense associations that come with reading ~~**ULYSSES**~~. Also I recommend flipping around. If you're curious about "Penelope," then skip to the end and read it. There's no reason you shouldn't indulge a little; that's all the indulgence you'll get out of the book your first read, after all. 

 

The second time I read it I read the Bloomsday Reader along with it. This allowed for a guided, more methodical approach, since I already had an exploratory one. 

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Ulysses by James Joyce.

Anyone have advice on approaching/ reading/ tackling/ wrestling with Ulysses?

 

Read it in Dublin. Joyce famously said that if Dublin were every destroyed, you could rebuild it through Ulysses. Alas, I don't have money to go to Ireland, but everyone I know who did study abroad said this was true.

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