By highlighting words you can access both audio and visual definitions of words that are unfamiliar. And those are just a few of the features. Not only is there instant access to many resources in Ulysses, but it allows a student to decide on their own path in exploring a subject. It seems that this individualized style of learning would motivate students to learn nearly any topic because they would be free to pursue the aspects of the topic that caught their interest. By helping a student find what interests them, Ulysses could also increase motivation to learn more poetry.
Motivation is crucial to gaining real understanding of a subject.
It is extremely difficult for a single teacher to provide the motivation that is necessary for a large group of students with widely varying interests and learning styles, yet this is exactly what Ulysses does. Ulysses also deals well with the problem of students having different backgrounds in a subject. In my case, I knew little about the Trojan War, yet at the click of the mouse Ulysses gave me a short captivating summary of the war that made the poem much more relevant to me. As a bonus, with Ulysses there was none of the intimidation of asking a professor a similar question in a large class. Another plus to the Ulysses program was that it presented contradicting interpretations of the poem from a number of experts.