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Ep. 112 – Exiles (w/ Steve Carey)
Once maligned, later tentatively praised, James Joyce’s only existing play, Exiles, may be his least popular work. Though it is rarely staged these days, Bloomsday in Melbourne’s Steve Carey is up to the challenge. We talk why Exiles has been so maligned, why it’s actually good, and how to go about staging a play that…
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Ep. 111 – Enthymemic
All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Wait… In this episode, we discuss the art and technic of “Aeolus”: rhetoric and “enthymemic.” Topics include Stuart Gilbert and his schema, rhetoric as a classical art form, the Jesuits and rhetoric, the extremely comprehensive lists of rhetorical forms found in…
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Ep. 110 – Aeolus
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind… We kick off our series on Ulysses’ seventh episode, “Aeolus”! Topics in this episode include Book X of The Odyssey, Homeric parallels found in “Aeolus”, the headlines, the Evening Telegraph as it appears in Ulysses, Stromboli, brazen walls and floating isles, wind and air imagery, the…
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Who was the real Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell?
“Dubliners were proud of Endymion. They were proud that they tolerated Endymion, but also that he tolerated them. Most people watched him and remembered him with affection, and only a few were aware of the darker side to some of his mutterings.” – John Simpson This post is a part of an occasional series on…
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Ep. 109 – The Tower of Silence
Break out the Tantalus glasses – we’re finally getting out of the Underworld! Topics in our final episode covering “Hades” include paying the ferryman, turning a suit, rats, Robert Emmet, the speech from the dock, toxic nostalgia, cremation, the Catholic Church’s position on cremation, quicklime, Zoroastrianism, the Parsi Tower of Silence, the unexpected consequences of…
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U.P: Up
“Of course, there is the possibility that it means nothing whatever; then Denis Breen is projecting his own mental disturbances on an essential blank.” – Robert Adams, Surface and Symbol Bloom’s route to lunch in Ulysses’ eighth episode, “Lestrygonians”, is littered with obstacles. After dodging the Hely’s sandwichmen and crossing Westmoreland St., Bloom bumps into…
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Ep. 108 – The Chief’s Grave (w/ Jordan LeVeque)
Sometimes, Bloom is right to be wrong. Topics in this episode include Charles Stewart Parnell’s funeral and grave, Parnell as Agamemnon, Parnell as a Christ figure, graveyard iconography, Old Ireland’s Hearts and Hands, All Souls’ Day, euphemisms for death, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a stuffed owl, Milly’s funeral for a bird,…
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Ep. 107 – Far away a donkey brayed.
What’s up with that donkey in Glasnevin? Topics in this episode include seagulls in Ulysses, the Blooms’ old digs in Lombard St. West, The Joyce Project, Mesias the tailor, donkey lore, superstitions of death, a strange work of art, Lucia di Lammermoor, Ivy Day, the location of Bloom’s future grave, Altman the Saltman, Finglas, Joe…
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Kino’s & Hely’s: Two Ads in Lestrygonians
“In using advertisements to represent Ulysses, then, Joyce is intentionally degrading the novel, drawing it into the muck of popular culture for comic effect. A trouser advertisement in a rowboat: This is the language of Ulysses!” – Daniel Gunn Leopold Bloom, adman extraordinaire, can’t help but notice the dozens of ads he passes throughout the…
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Ep. 106 – M’Intosh
Who is the man in the macintosh? Topics in this episode include trying to figure out the identity of Ulysses’ most enigmatic figure, Penrose, HCE, Peter Falk, the details we can decipher from M’Intosh’s brief appearances in Ulysses, the infallibility of Bovril, Dusty Rhodes, why searching for Easter eggs can be unsatisfying, Theoclymenos, James Clarence…