Irish Nationalism
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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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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. 153 – Who Were the Real Men in the Library from “Scylla and Charybdis”?
Eglinton knows Best. Topics in this episode include the real-life versions of John Eglinton and Richard Best, Best’s contribution to the study of Irish mythology, how Best supported James Joyce’s abandoned music career, what his portrayal in Ulysses gets right and wrong, how the real Best felt about his fictional counterpart in Ulysses, gay-coding and…
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Decoding Dedalus: He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket.
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. 204 – 205 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at…
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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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Ep. 138 – Lizzie Twigg (w/ Elizabeth Foley O’Connor)
“Everybody who met her liked her – because she was warm and outgoing. Here I am saying good things about Lizzie. Poor Liz – nobody remembers her now.” – Padraic Colum, 1969 This episode features an interview with scholar Elizabeth Foley O’Connor about Irish poet Lizzie Twigg, her legacy as a poet, her brief mention…
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Ep. 128- FROM THE FATHERS
Featuring a surprise historical cameo! Topics in this episode include our final example of Aristotelian rhetoric, the only passage of Ulysses recorded by James Joyce, the battle of wits between Mr. Justice Fitzgibbon and John F. Taylor, misperceptions about Taylor’s oratory, the Gaelic Revival, Dreamy Jimmy, ferial tone, a Moses for Ireland, MacHugh can’t catch…
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Ep. 127 – A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
“Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don’t ask.” Topics in this episode include a rumor about Stephen, Professor Magennis, Æ the mastermystic, drama within Dublin’s occult circles, how Æ helped James Joyce get published, the opal hush poets, Joycean tarot cards, D.P. Moran and…
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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…
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Decoding Bloom: John Howard Parnell
This is a post in a series called Decoding Bloom where I take a paragraph of Ulysses and break it down line by line. The passage below comes from “The Lestrygonians”, the eighth episode of Ulysses. It appears on page 164-165 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). It begins “Provost’s house” and ends “house of…