Irish history
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Ep. 175 – Father Conmee
What is Dublin without Church and State? Topics in this episode include Stephen/Joyce’s past with Father Conmee, what Father Conmee represents, the eternal battle between Church and State (is it even a battle?), the collusion between Church and State, Father Conmee’s fondness for high-class women, which children Father Conmee likes, Father Conmee’s love of the…
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“Sirens” Songs: The Croppy Boy
This is part one of a two part series about select songs from the “Sirens” episode. You can read part one here. “Bloom’s, the novel’s, and, apparently, Joyce’s answer to a rancid discourse of Irish nationalism appears to be nothing more than gas, flatulence induced by an Irish diet too rich in that unctuous, “grosser”…
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The Most Historic Spot in All Dublin
“History in ‘Wandering Rocks’ is not only colonial history registered in the fabric of the city; it is also quite specifically colonial history distorted and dominated by Protestant and Anglo-Irish interpretations.” – Len Platt The eighth section of Ulysses’ tenth episode, “Wandering Rocks” opens with “two pink faces” greeting a third in some dark, dusty…
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The Superior, The Very Reverend John Conmee S. J.
“The tidal waterway, the Anna Liffey, mother of Dublin, plays as ever her part in Joyce’s Dublin. As a creative force she is older and greater than Christ or Caesar. If Christ left Dublin the city would still exist. Man can invent fresh gods as he needs them and new gods would replace the old;…
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Ep. 151 – Blind Stripling
A wild Blazes Boylan appears. Topics in this episode include the incredible story of Reverend Thomas Connellan, the Bible Wars, Soupers, the Bird’s Nest orphanage, apostasy and conversion, a typographical error heroically corrected, the blind stripling, whether or not the blind stripling actually wants help from Leopold Bloom, Bloom’s savior complex, Bloom’s empathy, the history…
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Ep. 141 – The Fascination of a Name
“Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of commons by the arm.” Topics in this episode include James Stephens and his organizational blunder, Michaelmas traditions, architecture and peristalsis, the legacy of Dr George Salmon and his big spooky…
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Ep. 140 – Up the Boers!
Was Leopold Bloom ever totally radical? Topics in this episode include Bloom’s memory of a protest, Bloom’s view of the police, the significance of soup imagery, the origins of the Boer War, Irish Nationalist opposition to the Boer War, Joseph Chamberlain, Christiaan de Wet, the irony of Irish Nationalist support for the Boer cause, a…
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Decoding Dedalus: Hamlet, ou le Absentminded Beggar
“The art of James Joyce, like that of Mallarmé, is art preoccupied with method, with how it’s made. Even the sensuality of Ulysses is a symptom of intermediation. It is an hallucinatory delirium – the kind treated by psychiatrists – presented as an end in itself.” – Fernando Pessoa This is a post in a…
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Ep. 130 – THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES
Nelson supposes his toeses are roses, but Nelson supposes erroneously. Topics in this episode include Barcelona, revisiting James Joyce’s Guinness ad, the history of Nelson’s pillar, Horatio Nelson, the final resting place of Nelson’s head, possible replacements for Nelson atop the former pillar, failed attempts to raise the wind, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or…
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Ep. 123 – THE GREAT GALLAHER
What opera is like a railway line? Topics in this episode include MacHugh’s love of Greek, kyrie eleison, Lenehan’s riddle and limerick, the legendary Ignatius Gallaher, the real-life Gallaher, the Phoenix Park murders and the Invincibles, what Crawford gets wrong about the Invincibles, Gumley and Skin-the-Goat, Gallaher’s great scoop in the New York World, the…