About 30 people, including several leading overseas scholars, will take part from today in a three-day conference at the University of Otago, devoted to the works of celebrated Irish writer James Joyce.
The gathering, titled ''Joycean Worlds'' aimed to bring together ''dedicated and enthusiastic Joyceans from New Zealand and Australia'' to share their ''worlds'', organisers said.
And the sharing includes the views of distinguished speakers Prof Vicki Mahaffey, of the University of Illinois, in the United States, and Dr Tony Thwaites, of the University of Queensland, Australia.
Prof Peter Kuch, director of the Otago University Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, said this was not the biggest gathering organised by the centre but was its first devoted to Joyce.
This was a ''boutique'' meeting which was small enough to enable everyone to attend all the sessions, and several leading young Otago researchers would be presenting papers, he said.
When a 1967 film version of Joyce's novel Ulysses was first shown in New Zealand, it was screened to segregated audiences, with males and females seated separately.
Prof Mahaffey, a leading Joyce scholar, said yesterday Ulysses had always proved provocative, and the challenging nature of the work and the power of its language kept drawing readers back to it.
