In which city is James Joyce's "Ulysses" chiefly set?

James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is chiefly set in Dublin. The novel follows Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Molly Bloom across Dublin on 16 June 1904, a day now commemorated as Bloomsday.

Joyce structures the book around Homer’s “Odyssey”: Bloom parallels Odysseus, Molly parallels Penelope and Stephen parallels Telemachus. Dublin’s streets, pubs, libraries, hospitals and homes provide the modern landscape for those mythic correspondences.

The action ranges across the city, beginning near Sandycove and moving through Dublin’s south side, city centre and north side before concluding around Howth Head. Paris is where the completed book was published, while Trieste was one of Joyce’s residences; neither is the novel’s principal setting.

The setting matters because Joyce turns ordinary urban life into epic material. A walk, funeral, newspaper visit or trip to a pub becomes part of a carefully mapped literary city, making Dublin one of the book’s central characters.