I have not read Ulysses by James Joyce, few people have. Even fewer have understood it. To honor the annual Bloomsday festival going on right now, here is a map showing the wanderings and locations within the book. The map about as easy to understand as the plot itself.
I have not found much information on the map's author, Aimee Stewart. Her company seems to have disappeared from the internet.
The routes of the main characters are color coded by episode (or chapter) and the line pattern represents the mode of transportation (walking, vehicle, dreaming or floating). The novel begins with Stephen Dedalus at the Sandycove Martello Tower on the coast near Dublin while the second episode features him lecturing about the Greek statesman Pyrrhus. The clocks indicate the time of day, as the entire novel takes place during a single day (Bloomsday - June 16th, 1904).
In episode 8, Leopold Bloom eats a cheese sandwich at Davy Byrne's pub while contemplating his wife's infidelity, then heads to the National Library.
The final episode consists of Molly Bloom's thoughts as she lies in bed with her eye-less husband.
There is a very subtle grid on the map with a street index at the bottom. On the side next to the color legend is a list of symbols. The meaning of this is unclear as none of these appear on the map.
Of course if you really want to clear things up you can look at this blurry copy of a map by Vladimir Nabokov who said "Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic,
and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin
with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced."
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| via Paris Review |
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