Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Title Page

Annotations
ULYSSES   Ulysses is the dominant English form (and the form used across Europe, with slight variations) of standard Latin Ulixēs. The name itself corresponds to Ancient Greek Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus): the hero of Homer's Odyssey. The Latin Ulyssēs is a less classical variant, used in standard English translations of Homer's epic (e.g. George Chapman, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Butler). In particular, Joyce was familiar from a young age with Charles Lamb's The Adventures of Ulysses. In 1895, when he was in his third year at Belvedere College, Joyce chose Ulysses as his subject for an essay entitled "My Favourite Hero".

PRONUNCIATION OF THE TITLE   Ulysses has traditionally been stressed on the second syllable, in accord with the original Latin. It still is, in US English especially. But often it is stressed on the first syllable instead, notably in the UK and Ireland when referring to the novel. Whichever syllable Joyce himself stressed, he pronounced the word as "oulissays" or "oolissays", very close to the original Latin (no initial "y" sound, for example).

SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY   Shakespeare and Company was a bookstore founded by an American expatriate Sylvia Beach in Paris. It originally opened at 8 Rue Depuytren on 17 November 1919 before moving to larger premises at 12 Rue de l'Odéon in 1922. Joyce first met Beach at a literary soirée at the poet André Spire's house at Neuilly-sur-Seine on 11 July 1920. Fittingly, Beach first approached Joyce in Spire's library. The following day Joyce visited her bookshop and the two became fast friends. Sylvia Beach went on to publish Ulysses on 2 February 1922.

RUE DE L'ODÉON   The Rue de l'Odéon is a street in the Odéon quarter of the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the Left Bank. The French poet Adrienne Monier's bookshop, La Maison des amis des livres, was located at No. 7. In 1922 her lover Sylvia Beach moved her bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, to No. 12. On his second visit to Paris in early 1903, Joyce regularly dined at a café in the nearby Carrefour de l'Odéon.