ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

The City as Text: A Geocritical Reading of Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses has often been celebrated as one of the most spatially detailed novels of modernism, where the city of Dublin is not merely a setting but a living presence. This paper, entitled “The City as Text: A Geocritical Reading of Joyce’s Ulysses”, approaches the novel through the lens of geocriticism to explore how space, place, and geography are written into narrative form. Joyce recreates Dublin with such precision that readers can follow characters across actual streets, pubs, and homes, turning the novel into a literary map. Geocriticism allows us to see how these urban spaces carry multiple layers of meaning: they are personal, historical, and political at once. For instance, Leopold Bloom’s wanderings reflect the rhythms of everyday life, yet also highlight questions of belonging and alienation within a colonized city. Stephen Dedalus’s movements, in contrast, emphasize intellectual and cultural aspirations, revealing Dublin as both a restrictive and imaginative space. By fusing myth with geography, Joyce overlays Homer’s Odyssey onto Dublin, creating a double map that merges the local with the universal. In doing so, Ulysses transforms the city into a text where each street and landmark tells a story about identity, memory, and power. This study argues that a geocritical reading of Ulysses highlights the ways literature does not just describe place but actively produces it. Dublin becomes a site where narrative and geography interact, offering insights into how cities shape human consciousness and cultural identity. Ultimately, Joyce’s Dublin is more than a city; it is a narrative layout that invites readers to engage with the urban world as both real and imagined.