what am i supposed to know before reading ulysses?
>>7374927
That you are probably not smart enough to read it and that you will struggle with it.
Everyone (normal) realizes this the first time they grapple with Ulysses.
Easy mode: just read it and enjoy the novel for its astonishing language
Adequate mode: Dubliners, Portrait, the Odyssey and Hamlet
Nightmare mode: Easy mode plus Virgil, Ovid, Roman historians, Dante, medieval romance, Aquinas and medieval scholastic theology, Chaucer and other Middle English writers, the complete works of Shakespeare, Goethe's Faust, all the English Romantic poets, Henrik Ibsen, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Moore, the catechism of the Catholic Church, a working knowledge of Latin, Italian and Irish, a deep understanding of Irish mythology, history and popular culture around the turn of the century and so on and so forth.
>>7374927
Where can I find the tops of those feets?
>>7374982
>Tops of feet
Do you also enjoy the crusts of sandwiches?
>>7374982
It's called the dorsum pedis. :)
>>7374986
>he doesn't enjoy every part of the foot
You're no footfriend of mine. Just a footpleb. Disgusting.
There's a lot you could benefit from knowing, but realistically speaking, you probably don't have the in-depth Jesuit education Joyce had. And in fact nobody does anymore. So rather than stressing out over doing background reading, you might as well just cheat. Get yourself a book called Ulysses Annotated, by Gabler, that gives line-by-line notes on literary, cultural, and local references in the text - it will help you out whenever you get confused and it even includes maps too! (There is also an older one called Allusions in Ulysses by I forget who that you might be able to find in a library.)
That said - although Ulysses does have tons of allusions, N O B O D Y is realistically going to be able to catch them all. And even if you could catch them all, that can end up being a distraction. "Okay so this scene with Bloom and Stephen in the cabman's hut parallels where Odysseus encounters the swineherd Eumaeus in Ithaca in Book Whatever of the Odyssey..." Like, sure, maybe you can feel real cool and smart by knowing that little factoid. But overobsessing over factoids like that can actually become kind of a trap for the reader - a way of mistaking a decoding process, or a "database lookup"-like process, for actually engaging with Bloom and Stephen and Molly as characters with memories and emotions and quotidian thoughts and bodily processes etc. And appreciating the novel for its beauty, humor, verbal invention, texture of metaphor, wealth of literary & rhetorical technique, and the characters' basic humanity.
TL;DR you should use reference materials to help understand stuff that's legitimately confusing or baffling to you, but don't get allusion-hunting get in the way of just reading and enjoying the novel.
>>7374927
most important: it is a meme
>>7375630
\thread
>>7375638
This. Just make sure to brush up on your meme game beforehand.
>>7375630
>N O B O D Y is realistically going to be able to catch them all
This. There are references that still haven't been sourced.
FEET! FEET! FEET!
>>7376600
Lots of people on 4chan think that you gotta catch 'em all.
>>7377962
I think it has something to do with the fact that most people on 4chan have been repressed by women their entire lives, and so are aroused by picturing themselves literally at the feet of pretty girls they know they could never even talk to in real life.
>>7378406
Can't speak for all of us, but that's not the case for me. I just admire nice foot aesthetics. So much so I want my mouth on it. I don't in any way want to be stepped on or worship her feet.
>>7378406
>they know they could never even talk to in real life.
You mean like every other person being into models and celebrities for the exact same reason? Did you really think you were being some armchair psych pro here?
