Poetry and Music in Ul…
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Decoding Dedalus: Latin Quarter Hat
He dressed in black, a Hamlet without a wicked uncle…. – Richard Ellmann This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and break it down line by line.The passage below comes from “Proteus,” the third episode of Ulysses. It appears on pages 41-42 in my copy…
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Ep. 6 – Tea for the Tower-Men
Hell is breakfast with Buck Mulligan.Kelly and Dermot talk about the allegory of the old milk woman who visits Stephen and the boys in the Martello Tower. Topics covered include Hiberno-English, the importance of tea in Irish culture and who the hell Mother Grogan was. On the Blog: The Women of Ulysses: Mother Grogan and…
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Poetry in Ulysses: Lycidas
—Tell us a story, sir.—O, do, sir. A ghoststory. For all posts on music and poetry in Ulysses, visit this page. Did you ever have a teacher in school who had a tenuous-at-best grip on their lessons? They were easily distracted or maybe a little too much of a hippie. Maybe they were a substitute…
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Ep. 3 – Joyce v. Gogarty
In this episode we tackle the falling out between James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty, the origins of the character Buck Mulligan, what really happened in the Martello tower, blasphemous poetry and how Joyce found his sense of humor. On the Blog: Say ‘Hello’ to Martello Towers Who was the Real Buck Mulligan? Poetry…
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Stephen’s Riddle
I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality. – James Joyce To listen to a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. At the close of his lesson in…
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James Joyce’s Poetic Rage
To put it nicely, James Joyce was a prickly pear. It’s well known that he left Dublin for continental Europe in 1904, never to return. His exile was self-imposed, but that didn’t stop him from metaphorically backing out of the room with two middle fingers raised. This reaction was simultaneously over-the-top and kind of justified.…
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Poetry in Ulysses: The Ballad of Joking Jesus
-We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather blasphemous. I’m not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn’t it? For all posts on music and poetry in Ulysses, visit this page. In “Telemachus,” Stephen Dedalus and the boys head down to the sea beside…
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The Women of Ulysses: Mother Grogan and the Milk Woman
To hear a discussion of this topic, check out the podcast episode here. Part of an occasional series on the women of Ulysses. Mother Grogan pops up a couple times throughout Ulysses. She is a reference to an anonymous folk song called Ned Grogan. I couldn’t find a recording of it, so I suppose it’s…