George AE Russell

  • Ep. 161 – Yogibogeybox

    We finally learn the weirdest thing that Joyce and Gogarty got up to. Topics in this episode include Giacomo Joyce and dirty love letters, the pain of not being invited, Æ’s New Songs and Joyce’s exclusion from it, why Æ Russell hasn’t released any new songs this year, Aristotle’s experiment, the meaning of nookshotten, Shakespeare…

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  • Ep. 159: AEIOU

    Stephen Dedalus beats debt with this one simple trick! Topics incluce: “Scylla and Charybdis’” dialectic as metacommentary on Ulysses as a whole, the perils of offending the gods of the sea, Stephen takes offense to Æ, Stephen’s many debts, the artistic value of green room gossip, contrasting Æ and Mr. Deasy, Stephen as the ship…

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  • Ep. 158 – Hamnet

    Stephen Dedalus finally gets to the fireworks factory. Topics in this episode include lots of Hamlet, Stephen introduces his theory of Hamlet, James Joyce’s Shakespeare sources, Elizabethan slang, Sackerson the bear, everything we know about the real Hamnet Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s reaction to his son’s death, how Hamnet’s death shows up in the works of Shakespeare,…

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  • Ep. 157 – The Absentminded Beggar

    Was Hamlet just distracted the whole time? Topics in this episode include: the continued character assassination of Mr. Best, Haines makes a return, Douglas Hyde’s poetry, the artistic ethos of the Celtic Revival, the political demands of the art scene in 1904 Dublin, Æ, symbolist poetry and Stéphane Mallarmé, the influence of Mallarmé on Joyce,…

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  • Ep. 156 – Horseness is the Whatness of Allhorse

    Are you Team Aristotle or Team Plato? Topics in this episode include Charybdis, schoolboys and schoolmen, whether or not Plato was shallow, artists being rejected by Plato’s Republic, platonism v. neoplatonism, Aristotle’s view of art, Stephen’s dagger definitions, the Plato and Antisthenes’ thoughts on horses, horse v. horseness, Plato’s Forms, the ineluctable modality of the…

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  • Ep. 155 – On this side idolatry.

    You naughtn’t to look, missus, so you naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental. Topics in this episode include Old Ben’s critique of Shakespeare, bardolatry, Shakespeare as a symbol of English supremacy, how Plato is like Charybdis, formless spiritual essences, seeing ourselves as others see us, the paintings of Gustave Moreau, and so much…

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  • Ep. 154 – Folly. Persist.

    Satan comes forward a sinkapace. Topics in this episode include Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Goethe’s thoughts on Hamlet translated through Thomas Lyster, Elizabethan dances, Sir Toby Belch, Monsieur de la Palice and a hilarious French pun, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Stephen’s six brave medicals, Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan, Cranly, Medical Dick and Medical Davy,…

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  • Ep. 152 – Scylla and Charybdis

    Here be monsters. We crack into Ulysses’ ninth episode: “Scylla and Charybdis.” Topics in this episode include: a great philosopher’s thoughts on Shakespeare, Dermot, another great philosopher’s, thoughts on Shakespeare, Odysseus’ encounter with Scylla and Charybdis, the geography and currents of the Strait of Messina that likely inspired the story of Scylla and Charybdis, the…

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  • Decoding Dedalus: Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers.

    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 line below comes from “Scylla and Charybdis,” the ninth episode of Ulysses. It appears on page p.191-192 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the passage that…

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  • Ep. 145 – Gorgon-Zola

    Fermentation is hot. Topics in this episode include Davy Byrne’s moral pub, Nosey Flynn, Noah and the curse of Ham, Plumtree’s Potted Meat, cannibalism, missionaries who get eaten by cannibals, long pig, Reverend MacTrigger, lapses in Leopold Bloom’s empathy, the Jesuits’ mission of conversion, colonialism, Yom Kippur, food as an expression of religion, mity cheese,…

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