Addressing more than 100 people in a retirement lecture on campus, Prof Ackerley (67) said many readers reached only the third chapter before they gave up the complex 18-chapter novel.
The book, which Prof Ackerley said was one of the great works of world literature, focuses on the wanderings of its hero, Leopold Bloom, throughout a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin.
Prof Ackerley's lecture was devoted to ''The Art (and Science) of the Limerick, with particular reference to Ulysses.
And Prof Ackerley said the construction of both Ulysses and limericks reflected a human love of pattern-finding.
He also emphasised the comedy and humanity of the novel and said that although Bloom had been cuckolded, he ultimately triumphed over rival suitors as Odysseus did in Homer's The Odyssey.
Prof Ackerley's lecture focused on work he had done to summarise the 18 chapters of Ulysses in 18 limericks, the collection having already been published as a book, titled Sweets of Sin: Ulysses in limericks, and also been accepted for publication by the James Joyce Quarterly.
Prof Ackerley said in an interview the scope of the limerick was ''unlimited'' and a good limerick was a ''microcosm of the wider world'' but ''there must be wit rather than crudity alone'' and only 1% of those written were good.
In retirement, he planned to continue work on a major research project funded by a $750,000 grant from the Marsden Fund, and to find a publisher for a redeveloped collection of essays in honour of his former departmental colleague, the late Dr Bill Dean.
Prof Ackerley said he would continue to give a few lectures.
