Busch-Mullen, Jacqueline

This thesis serves as an exploration of the environment in James Joyce’s Ulysses which holds accountable the violent material politics of England against Ireland and the acts of consumption committed against human and nonhuman bodies, which is a radical critique of the patriarchal discourse and action that decimated a once sovereign nation and its landscape. I argue through an eco-critical lens that intersects the human body, a once impenetrable landscape, and the elision of Brehon Gaelic law as a victim of colonial usurpation. There is a deep focus geared towards masculinity and its imposition upon the female body, but also an important look at the relationship between man and nature. While sexuality and nature co-exist in Ulysses, we can envision this novel as an “epic of living with animals" and their human predecessors.