On James Joyce and Edward Albee

[Azfar]

I'm interested in reading Ulysses, after doing some background reading on [the use of] streams of consciousness, a literary technique I've come to like. Joyce is apparently famous for this narrative form. My question is, are there any prerequisites to reading this work? Wikipedia talks about the parallels between his work and The Odyssey which I am familiar with...kind of (I read parts of it in Grade 9, I think?).

How about Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? How much do I need to know about Woolf in order to make sense of Albee's play? I've heard of her before, but I've never read any of her works-if that comes as a shock...I might read something by her soon; apparently she was a pioneer of streams of consciousness as well. And my Kindle never fails to show her digitized portrait.

Many thanks!

Edited September 26, 2011 by Azfar

[lethalsponge]

I haven't read Ulysses myself, but I believe that it would be heavily useful to have a prior reading of The Odyssey, Hamlet, Macbeth, and James Joyce's previous works (Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man), since characters from those two books do pop up in Ulysses. Also, Ulysses requires a decent background in both Irish and Dublin history. After that, you should be good to go, but you should probably also keep an analytical guide (there are plenty good ones out there) just in case, because you know, it's a bit of a hard book.

[trumperies]

With Ulysses, read it more than once. There is such much to take from it that you won't be able to truly appreciate it without thorough research and full understanding. An analytic guide is a must as well as reading Joyce's The Dubliners. That will give you a lot of wonderful background information.