Bloomsday 2004

The sixteenth of June 2004 saw the centenary of Bloomsday, the temporal setting of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Dublin seemed given over to the anniversary of a book not a word of which was written in Ireland, and all over the world there were celebrations A secular feast where people of almost all languages and certainly all literatures were linked together to commemorate a day. But what does the day commemorate? Not the death of a god, nor the delivery of a people from an avenging angel, nor even the establishment of the rule of the just. I think it is generally agreed by Joyce scholars that it marks James Joyce's first date with Nora Barnacle.