Bloomsday
Encyclopedia
Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 and relive the events in his novel Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. Joyce chose the date because his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle
Nora Barnacle
Nora Barnacle was the lover, companion, inspiration, and eventual wife of author James Joyce.-Biography:Nora Barnacle was born in the town of Galway, Ireland, but the day of her birth is uncertain. Depending on the source, it varies between the 21st and the 24th of March 1884...

, happened on that day, when they walked to the Dublin urban village of Ringsend
Ringsend
Ringsend is a southside inner suburb of Dublin, the capital of Ireland. It is located on the south bank of the River Liffey, about two kilometres east of the city centre, and is the southern terminus of the East Link Toll Bridge....

. The name derives from Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom is the fictional protagonist and hero of James Joyce's Ulysses. His peregrinations and encounters in Dublin on 16 June 1904 mirror, on a more mundane and intimate scale, those of Ulysses/Odysseus in The Odyssey....

, the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

 of Ulysses.

In 2004 Vintage Publishers issued Yes I said yes I will yes: A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday. It is one of the few monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

s that details the increasing popularity of Bloomsday. The book's title comes from the novel's famous last lines.

The English term Bloomsday is usually used in Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

 as well, though some purist
Linguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...

 publications, including the Irish Wikipedia, call it Lá Bloom .

Bloomsday activities

Dublin

The day involves a range of cultural activities including Ulysses readings and dramatisations, pub crawl
Pub crawl
A pub crawl is the act of one or more people drinking in multiple pubs or bars in a single night, normally walking or busing to each one between drinking.-Origin of the term:...

s and general merriment, much of it hosted by the James Joyce Centre
James Joyce Centre
The James Joyce Centre is a museum dedicated to promoting an understanding of the life and works of James Joyce.The Centre is situated in a restored 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 35 North Great George's Street Dublin, dating from a time when north inner city Dublin was at the height of its...

 in North Great George's Street. Enthusiasts often dress in Edwardian
Edwardian period
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period in the United Kingdom is the period covering the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910.The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 and the succession of her son Edward marked the end of the Victorian era...

 costume to celebrate Bloomsday, and retrace Bloom's route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne's pub
Davy Byrne's pub
Davy Byrne's Pub is situated at 21 Duke Street, Dublin 2 and was made famous in James Joyce's novel Ulysses. In the novel, Leopold Bloom stops for a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy while wandering through Dublin....

. Hard-core devotees have even been known to hold marathon readings of the entire novel, some lasting up to 36 hours. The first celebration took place in 1954, and a major five-month-long festival (ReJoyce Dublin 2004) took place in Dublin between 1 April and 31 August 2004. On the Sunday in 2004 before the 100th "anniversary" of the fictional events described in the book, 10,000 people in Dublin were treated to a free, open-air, full Irish breakfast
Full breakfast
A full breakfast is a meal that consists of several courses, traditionally a starter , a main course, tea with milk, toast and marmalade or other preserves. Many variations are possible....

 on O'Connell Street
O'Connell Street
O'Connell Street is Dublin's main thoroughfare. It measures 49 m in width at its southern end, 46 m at the north, and is 500 m in length...

 consisting of sausage
Sausage
A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...

s, rashers, toast
Toast
Toast is bread that has been browned by exposure to radiant heat. This browning reaction is known as the Maillard reaction. Toasting warms the bread and makes it firmer, so it holds toppings more securely...

, bean
Bean
Bean is a common name for large plant seeds of several genera of the family Fabaceae used for human food or animal feed....

s, and black and white pudding
White pudding
White pudding or oatmeal pudding is a meat dish popular in Scotland, Ireland, Northumberland, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. White pudding is very similar to black pudding, but does not include blood. Consequently, it consists of pork meat and fat, suet, bread, and oatmeal formed into the shape of...

s. "Every year hundreds of Dubliners dress as characters from the book ... as if to assert their willingness to become one with the text. It is quite impossible to imagine any other masterpiece of modernism having quite such an effect on the life of a city."

On Bloomsday 1982, the centenary year of Joyce's birth, Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ
RTE
RTÉ is the abbreviation for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the public broadcasting service of the Republic of Ireland.RTE may also refer to:* Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 25th Prime Minister of Turkey...

, transmitted a continuous 30-hour dramatic performance of the entire text of Ulysses
Ulysses (broadcast)
The Ulysses broadcast occurred on Bloomsday 1982 when the Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ Radio, transmitted an uninterrupted, 30 hour, dramatised performance, by 33 actors of the RTÉ Players, of the entire text of James Joyce's epic novel, Ulysses, to commemorate the centenary of the author's birth,...

 on radio.

Hungary

Bloomsday has also been celebrated since 1994 in the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 town of Szombathely
Szombathely
Szombathely is the 10th largest city in Hungary. It is the administrative centre of Vas county in the west of the country, located near the border with Austria...

, the fictional birthplace of Leopold Bloom's father, Virág Rudolf, an emigrant Hungarian Jew
History of the Jews in Hungary
Hungarian Jews have existed since at least the 11th century. After struggling against discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, by the early 20th century the community grew to be 5% of Hungary's population , and were prominent in science, the arts and business...

. The event is usually centered around the Iseum
Iseum
An Iseum, also spelled Isaeum, is a sanctuary for the worshippers of the Greco-Roman god Isis. Isis was originally an Egyptian goddess who became hellenised. Many Iseums still exist today. They include the temple of Isis at Pompeii, a dedication at the Egyptian complex at Philae, and a scattering...

, the remnants of an Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...

 temple from Roman times
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, and the Blum-mansion, commemorated to Joyce since 1997, at 40–41 Fő street, which used to be the property of an actual Jewish family called Blum. Hungarian author László Najmányi in his 2007 novel, The Mystery of the Blum-mansion (A Blum-ház rejtélye) describes the results of his research on the connection between Joyce and the Blum family.

United States

The Rosenbach Museum & Library
Rosenbach Museum & Library
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is located within two 19th-century townhouses at 2008 and 2010 Delancey Place in Philadelphia. The historic houses contain the collections and treasures of Philip Rosenbach and his younger brother Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach...

 in Philadelphia is the home of the handwritten manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of Ulysses and celebrates Bloomsday with a street festival including readings, Irish music
Music of Ireland
Irish Music is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland.The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th, and into the 21st century, despite globalizing cultural forces...

, and traditional Irish cuisine
Irish cuisine
Irish cuisine is a style of cooking originating from Ireland or developed by Irish people. It evolved from centuries of social and political change. The cuisine takes its influence from the crops grown and animals farmed in its temperate climate. The introduction of the potato in the second half of...

 provided by local Irish-themed pubs.

New York City has several events on Bloomsday including formal readings at Symphony Space and informal readings and music at the downtown Ulysses' Folk House pub.

The Syracuse James Joyce Club holds an annual Bloomsday celebration at Johnston's BallyBay Pub in Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...

, at which large portions of the book are either read aloud, or presented as dramatizations by costumed performers. The club awards scholarships and other prizes to students who have written essays on Joyce or fiction pertaining to his work. The city is home to Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...

, whose press has published or reprinted several volumes of Joyce studies.

Italy

There have been many Bloomsday events in Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...

, where the first part of Ulysses was written. The Joyce Museum Trieste, opened on 16 June 2004, collects works by and about James Joyce, including secondary sources, with a special emphasis on his period in Trieste.

Since 2005 Bloomsday has been celebrated every year in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

, with a reading of Ulysses in Italian by volunteers (students, actors, teachers, scholars), starting at 0900 and finishing in the early hours of 17 June; the readings take place in 18 different places in the old town centre, one for each chapter of the novel, and these places are selected for their resemblance to the original settings. Thus for example chapter 1 is read in a medieval tower, chapter 2 in a classroom of the Faculty of Languages, chapter 3 in a bookshop on the waterfront, chapter 9 in the University Library, and chapter 12 ("Cyclops") in an old pub. The Genoa Bloomsday is organized by the Faculty of Languages and the International Genoa Poetry Festival.

Australia

In Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia, Bloomsday is hosted by the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies UNSW
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

 in association with the National Irish Association Sydney and the Consulate General of Ireland, Sydney.

Global

On Bloomsday 2011, @11ysses was the stage for an experimental day-long tweading of Ulysses. Starting at 0800 (Dublin time) on Thursday 16 June 2011, the aim was to explore what would happen if Ulysses was recast 140 characters at a time. It was hoped that the event would become the first of a series.

First Bloomsday Celebration

Bloomsday (a term Joyce himself did not employ) was invented in 1954, on the 50th anniversary of the events in the novel, when John Ryan
John Ryan (Dublin artist)
John Ryan Dublin, Ireland was an Artist, broadcaster, publisher, critic, editor, patron and publican.John Ryan was many things but primarily a key figure in Bohemian Dublin for many years. He knew nearly every artist of note that lived in, or passed through, Dublin from the 1940s onwards...

  (artist, critic, publican and founder of
Envoy magazine
Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art
December 1949- July 1951. Dublin, Ireland. Editor & Founder: John RyanDuring its brief existence, Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art, published the work of a broad range of writers, Irish and others. The first to publish J. P...

) and the novelist Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien
Brian O'Nolan was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist regarded as a key figure in postmodern literature. Best known for novels such as At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman and An Béal Bocht and many satirical columns in The Irish Times Brian O'Nolan (5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966) was...

 organised what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the Ulysses route. They were joined by Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

, Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

, Tom Joyce (a dentist who, as Joyce's cousin, represented the family interest) and AJ Leventhal (Registrar of Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

). Ryan had engaged two horse drawn cabs, of the old-fashioned kind, which in Ulysses Mr. Bloom and his friends drive to poor Paddy Dignam's funeral. The party were assigned roles from the novel. They planned to travel round the city through the day, visiting in turn the scenes of the novel, ending at night in what had once been the brothel quarter of the city, the area which Joyce had called Nighttown. The pilgrimage was abandoned halfway through, when the weary Lestrygonians succumbed to inebriation and rancour at the Bailey pub in the city centre, which Ryan then owned, and at which, in 1967, he installed the door to No. 7 Eccles Street (Leopold Bloom’s front door), having rescued it from demolition . A Bloomsday record of 1954, informally filmed by John Ryan, follows this pilgrimage.

Popular culture references

In 1956, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

 and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...

 were married by special licence of the Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

 at St George the Martyr Church, Holborn
St George the Martyr Holborn
St George the Martyr Holborn is an Anglican church located at the south end of Queen Square, Holborn, London Borough of Camden. It is dedicated to Saint George, and is so-called to distinguish it from the later nearby church of St...

, on 16 June, in honour of Bloomsday.

Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....

's 1967 album After Bathing at Baxter's
After Bathing at Baxter's
After Bathing at Baxter's was released in 1967 and is the third album by the San Francisco rock band Jefferson Airplane.Unlike Surrealistic Pillow, released earlier the same year, After Bathing at Baxter's is classified as psychedelic rock because it eschews the more commercial type pop songs, such...

contains the track, "Rejoyce", inspired by Joyce's Ulysses.

In Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...

' 1968 film The Producers
The Producers (1968 film)
The Producers is a 1968 American satirical dark comedy cult classic film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop...

, Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, and author.Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers...

's character is called Leo Bloom, an homage to Joyce's character. In the musical 2005 version
The Producers (2005 film)
# "Overture" - Orchestra# "Opening Night" - Opening Nighters# "We Can Do It" - Max and Leo# "I Wanna Be a Producer" - Leo, Accountants, Mr. Marks and Dancing Chorus Girls# "Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop" - Franz, Max, and Leo...

, in the evening scene at the Bethesda Fountain
Bethesda Fountain
Bethesda Terrace overlooks The Lake in New York City's Central Park. It is on two levels, united by two grand staircases and a lesser one that passes under Terrace Drive to provide passage southward to the Elkan Naumburg bandshell and The Mall, of which this is the architectural culmination, the...

 in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

, Leo asks, "When will it be Bloom's day?". However, in the earlier scene in which Bloom first meets Max Bialystock, the office wall calendar shows that the current day is 16 June, indicating that it is, in fact, Bloomsday.

Punk band Minutemen
Minutemen (band)
Minutemen were an American hardcore punk band formed in San Pedro, California in 1980. Composed of guitarist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley, Minutemen recorded four albums and eight EPs before Boon's death in an automobile accident in December 1985...

 have a song on their 1984 Double Nickels on the Dime
Double Nickels on the Dime
Double Nickels on the Dime is the third studio album by American punk trio Minutemen, released on the Californian independent record label SST Records in 1984...

album entitled "16 June".

Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...

 references Ulysses in two of his films. Once in 1991's Slacker
Slacker (film)
Slacker is an American independent film written and directed by Richard Linklater, who also appears in the film. Slacker was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991.-Plot summary:...

, where a character reads an excerpt from Ulysses after convincing his friends to dump a tent and a typewriter in a river as a response to a prior lover's infidelity. And again in 1995's Before Sunrise
Before Sunrise
Before Sunrise is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The film follows Jesse , a young American, and Céline , a young French woman, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and...

, where the events take place on 16 June.

In 2009 an episode of the cartoon The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

, "In the Name of the Grandfather
In the Name of the Grandfather
"In the Name of the Grandfather" is the fourteenth episode of the twentieth season of The Simpsons. It first aired on Sky1 in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 2009 and aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 22, 2009. It was the first...

", featured the family's trip to Dublin and Lisa's
Lisa Simpson
Lisa Marie Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. She is the middle child of the Simpson family. Voiced by Yeardley Smith, Lisa first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening...

 reference to Bloomsday.

Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy
Pat Conroy , is a New York Times bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films.-Early life:...

's 2009 novel South of Broad
South of Broad
South of Broad is a 2009 novel by Pat Conroy. The novel follows the life of Leopold Bloom King in Charleston, South Carolina. It ranges from his troubled childhood to his adult life with his close group of friends.-Plot summary:...

has numerous references to Bloomsday. Leopold Bloom King is the narrator. The book's first chapter describes the events of 16 June 1969 in Leo's story.

U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...

's 2009 song "Breathe
Breathe (U2 song)
"Breathe" is a song by Irish rock band U2 and the tenth track on their 2009 album No Line on the Horizon. The lyrics detail an outburst from the song's narrator. The song was developed primarily by guitarist The Edge, with musical influences from Jimmy Page and Jack White...

" refers to events taking place on a fictitious 16 June.

In the novel by Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas
Enrique Vila-Matas is a Spanish novelist who has had a long and outstanding literary career and is one of the most prestigious and original writers in contemporary Spanish fiction...

 Dublinesca (2010), part of the action takes place in Dublin for the Bloomsday. The book's main protagonist, Riba, a retired Spanish editor, moves to this city with several writer friends to officiate a "funeral" for the Gutenberg
Gutenberg
Gutenberg may refer to:People:* Johannes Gutenberg , inventor of movable type printing* Beno Gutenberg , a German-born seismologist* Erich Gutenberg , a German economistPlaces:...

 era.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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