Buck Mulligan
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Ep. 173 – Medical Dick and Medical Davy
…Gravy? Topics in this episode include the grande finale of Stephen’s Hamlet theory, he finally proves by algebra that Shakespeare is the ghost of his own father, dio boia, James Joyce’s reaction to Karl Bleibtreu’s Shakespeare conspiracy theories, Dana, Fred Ryan, the poetry and theatrical stylings of Buck Mulligan, Oliver St. John Gogarty’s play Blight,…
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Ep. 167 – Secondbest Bed
Sometimes the secondbest bed is the better bed. Topics in this episode include Griselsa, Antisthenes and Helen, art of surfeit, the Dark Lady of the sonnets, the erotic adventures of Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, how the Dark Lady connects the works of Shakespeare to the world of Ulysses, misogyny in the interpretation of Shakespeare, the…
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Ep. 166 – Synge
Why do we always fight most with the people we have the most in common with? Topics in this episode include James Joyce’s fraught relationship with playwright John Millington Synge, the way Synge shows up in Ulysses, in-jokes about Yeats that made it into Ulysses, Synge’s artistic work and why Joyce took issue with it,…
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Ep. 165 – Mr. W. H.
“—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.” Topics in this episode include Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” Shakespeare’s sonnets, the identity of the Fair Youth, the dedication on the folio of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the identity of…
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Ep. 164 – Puck Mulligan
You will serve that which you laugh at. Topics in this episode include how to pronounce “Szombathely,” Buck Mulligan’s incredible entrance into “Scylla and Charybdis,” Nicolas Cage, the heresies of Photius and Sebellius, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, why the other men must be relieved to see Buck Mulligan, whether we agree with Joyce’s claim that…
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Ep. 163 – The Spirit of Reconciliation
Bitches love sonnets. Topics in this episode include putting Beurla on it, basilisks and 13th century bestiaries, Pericles and purported Shakespeare apocrypha, the Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship, Bacon ciphers, George Brandes, Sidney, Frank Harris, the power of a granddaughter’s love, Hans Walter Gabler and the most controversial line in Ulysses, Thomas Aquinas, George Bernard…
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Lapwing
Near the end of “Scylla and Charybdis,” Ulysses’ ninth episode, Stephen realizes his lecture on Hamlet is rapidly disintegrating before his eyes. Not only are John Eglinton and the rest wholly unconvinced by his arguments, but he also has Buck Mulligan nipping at his heels, undermining him at every opportunity. Stephen looks to the heavens…
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The Chap that Writes like Synge
“Stephen had met Synge in Paris, and the clash of their temperaments had produced heat but no light.” – Frank Budgen Irish playwright John Millington Synge moves like a phantom through the pages of “Scylla and Charybdis”, Ulysses’ ninth episode. We get an allusion here, a namedrop there, but he never appears in person. Despite…
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An Intimate Portrait of Mr. W. H.
“The Love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that…
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Puck Mulligan: A Joycean-Shakespearean Fool
“—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?” – Haines In “Scylla and Charybdis,” Ulysses’ ninth episode, just as Stephen Dedelaus’ exegesis on Hamlet in “Scylla and Charybdis,” Ulysses’ ninth episode, reaches a…