Blog
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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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Kino’s & Hely’s: Two Ads in Lestrygonians
Leopold Bloom, adman extraordinaire, can’t help but notice the dozens of ads he passes throughout the day in Ulysses. Some delight Bloom so thoroughly that what seems like innocuous visual noise takes on important symbolic resonance throughout the whole of the novel. Others need a punch up to meet Bloom’s exacting standards. Let’s take a…
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Parallax
“The paths that Joyce lays out for Bloom and Stephen that day in Dublin are not parallel to one another, for then they would never meet. They are parallactic: his characters, unbeknownst to themselves, meet the same issues which themselves assume different appearances as they are differently perceived and experienced in the context of the…
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Elijah is coming! Is Coming!! IS COMING!!!
“This is the age of patent medicine.” – Stephen Dedalus As “Lestrygonians,” the eighth episode of Ulysses opens, Leopold Bloom’s tummy is rumbly. He’s on his way to a late lunch as the sights and sounds of Dublin stir his appetite either directly or symbolically. This foody-focus in James Joyce’s mind is a characteristic of…
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Decoding Dedalus: Ineluctable Modalities
“The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended. An esthetic image is presented to us either in space or in time. What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is presented in space.” – Stephen Dedalus, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man…